Erica Schmidt – Who Is Peter Dinklage’s Wife?
Erice Schmidt is the wife of Peter Dinklage. The couple was married in 2005 and have two children.
Erica Schmidt is an actress, a director, and a playwright. While she is best known professionally for writing both the stage musical and screenplay for Cyrano, she is also known for one other big thing – she is the wife of Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage. So, how did Erica Schmidt meet the vastly talented star?
ERICA SCHMIDT WENT TO VASSAR AND BEGAN WRITING PLAYS
One thing you need to know right at the start is that both Erica Schmidt and Peter Dinklage keep their personal life very guarded, which is why not much is known about Schmidt. What we do know is that she was born on June 8, 1975, and as for the where, that information is still up for debate as there is no other information regarding her birth. The rest of her upbringing is also unknown at this point.
According to a number of sources, Erica Schmidt attended Vassar College where she did graduate. While studying at Vassar, she was part of Laughing Stock, a comedy group that would compete with other local comedy groups. This set Erica Schmidt on the path of performing and entertainment, although she was unsure where her talent would take her, in front or behind the camera.
She began her career in earnest right after graduating from Vassar. Her first job was as a costume designer at Julliard. At the time, Erica Schmidt was living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Still trying to decide which way to take her career, the work at Julliard inspired Schmidt to look closer at stage plays. She became more serious and decided to jump headlong into it. Her very first big break came on a production of Jesus Christ Superstar where she was a deck stage manager at the St. Mark’s Youth and Young Adult Theatre Ministries.
SHE HAS SOME WRITING, DIRECTING, AND ACTING CREDITS
Erica Schmidt began to make a name for herself in 2000 when she grabbed her very first stage directorial job with As You Like It. She followed that up with Spanish Girl in 2002. In 2003, Erica Schmidt directed her first major critical hit, Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical.
At the same time, she still had designs on an acting career. She appeared in a small film called Miles from Nowhere, but that would be her one and only. She realized then that her talents lie on the stage as a director.
She probably should have known sooner which direction was going to work best for her. Because as she was delving deeper and deeper into directing for the stage, she was rewarded for her early hard work with the 2001 Princess Grace Award.
ERICA SCHMIDT MET PETER DINKLAGE IN THE EARLY 2000s AND MARRIED IN 2005
As Peter Dinklage describes it, the very first time he met Erica Schmidt, was something out of a “crazy, romantic movie.” He spoke about meeting Erica in a 2021 interview with The New York Times. “It was about 18 years ago now,” Dinklage said, looking back on that fateful evening.
“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 added, “See? I always think about movies. So that’s the night we met, the night the elephants walked through Manhattan.”
It was the beginning of the end for the two. In 2005, the pair decided to make it official by eloping in Las Vegas. “I was going there for a charity event,” Dinklage said in an earlier interview with The New York Times. “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.”
Like most marriages, theirs has been a work in progress for 17 years. But there is one thing they both realize about the other, the talent they both bring to the table. “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 explained to 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.” An actor who was on one of the biggest shows of all time, Game of Thrones.
As for Erica Schmidt, she has had to counter every time someone questions the couple’s height difference, feeling that together they make an unlikely duo. “What’s frustrating about it is that Pete is an incredibly handsome, charming, funny guy, but when he does a magazine or something it’s like, ‘Isn’t it amazing he’s four foot five inches tall and he’s sexy?’” she told Rolling Stone in 2012. “You know, that’s just who Pete is. And the rest of the world has to catch up.”
ERICA SCHMIDT AND PETER DINKLAGE HAVE TWO CHILDREN
Their unending love for each other has brought them two children. Again, being notoriously private, the only thing known about Erica Schmidt and Peter Dinklage’s children is their first child, a daughter, who was born in 2011 and the second child was born in 2017. The names have never been divulged, nor has the gender of their second child.
Not only are they very private about their personal lives and their children, but there is also one thing that will push Dinklage over the edge – people taking pictures of his and Erica Schmidt’s children without first asking. “People mean well, but when you’re walking down the street with your kid and people take your picture without asking…”
SHE CAST PETER DINKLAGE IN THE MOVIE VERSION OF CYRANO
Erica Schmidt finally gave her husband his wish, the part of Cyrano in the film version of the famous play. During an interview on 60 Minutes, Dinklage finally confessed when asked about him “begging” her for the part.
“’Begged’? Yeah. I mean, essentially, yes, that’s true,” Dinklage answered. “For an actor, you always wanna do something that — for me at least — that scares you … I just never had sung since I was a kid.”
The film starred Dinklage, after begging, as Cyrano and Haley Bennett as Roxanne. Joe Wright directed the musical from a screenplay written by Erica Schmidt which she based on the stage play she wrote. Schmidt was also an executive producer on the film.
ERICA SCHMIDT IS NOT ON SOCIAL MEDIA
As we have said ad nauseam, Erica Schmidt and Peter Dinklage are extremely private about their personal lives. For this reason, you will not find either on social media.
You will, though, see them from time-to-time walking around New York with their children in tow and you will most definitely see the loving couple at the many awards shows, play openings, and anywhere else their talents take them.
