Category - Entertainment
Peter Dinklage and His Wife's Meet-Cute Is Better Than Any Rom-Com
There’s no denying Peter Dinklage is one of the great actors of his generation, from his stage work to cult movies to, naturally, his incredible Emmy-winning run as Tyrion Lannister on Game of Thrones. But he tends to keep his personal life exactly that (similar to Post Malone and Cillian Murphy). So you might not know that he’s actually been married for two decades now. Here we break down everything you need to know about his marriage to Erica Schmidt (oh, and their two kids).

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So Who Is Erica Schmidt?
Dinklage’s wife is in the same industry as her thespian husband, who broke out with 2003’s The Station Agent, having written the script for the 2021 movie musical Cyrano, which also happened to star Dinklage.
But she has more playwright-director bona fides beyond that: Schmidt has earned a number of accolades, including the Robert and Gloria Hausman Theater Honor award in 2001. And she snagged Drama Desk Award and Lucille Lortel Award nominations for her lauded 2019 all-female stage adaption of Macbeth, called Mac Beth. Other theater directing credits like Humor Abuse, Trust, and As You Like It have brought her further acclaim.
And theater, above all else, is her passion.
"Unlike a lot of other people in our profession where film is the ultimate goal, theater is sacred to her. It's not entertainment; it's art," Dinklage told The Guardian in 2015. "She's very inspiring. She's definitely the artist of the family. ... I am just the TV actor who pays the bills."
He’s being modest, though. Dinklage is a stalwart in the New York theater scene, and has a number of acting credits under his belt, including A Month in the Country, Richard III, and Things We Want.
Related: Who Is Anne Hathaway's Husband? All About Her Romance With Adam Shulman
How Did They Meet?
In an interview with The New York Times, Dinklage compared his introduction to now-wife Schmidt to a rom-com meet-cute. The two got to know each other at a mutual friend’s home in New York City.
"It was about 18 years ago now. We were all at a friend's house and someone said, 'They're walking the elephants through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.' The circus was in town and it was snowing, and they were walking the elephants through Manhattan, a long line of them. It was like something out of a beautiful, fantastical, end-of-the-world, crazy, romantic movie," Dinklage said in the 2021 Times interview. "See? I always think about movies. So that's the night we met, the night the elephants walked through Manhattan."
What Was the Wedding Like?
Low-key, to be sure. Instead of going all out with a huge wedding, Dinklage and Schmidt eloped in Las Vegas in 2005. The timing, as he recalls, just worked out.
"I was going there for a charity event," Dinklage said in another New York Times story. "And then while we were there, we just decided to do it. It was a bit lonely. We got a VHS videocassette of the wedding that no one will ever see, that we've buried in a box deep beneath the earth's core,” he added, hopefully joking.
Do They Have Kids?
Indeed. Dinklage and Schmidt are proud parents to a daughter born in 2011, and a second child born in 2017. They have chosen not to share the sex or other details of the second child, preferring privacy. Both kids’ names are also publicly unknown. Based on his own super-fame, we’re guessing Dinklage as well as his wife understand the value of shielding young ones from the spotlight.