Two-foot-eight Troyer comes on in the Bond-villain quasi-Nehru jacket and impassively does the signature little finger to the lips move – worryingly like a precocious infant. This career spanned a period in which people of restricted height – Troyer had achondroplasia dwarfism – were starting to be regarded differently in cinema and in pop culture. But it was Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones star, who has really escaped the patronising prejudice in a very contemporary way. There is an ongoing debate about the whole idea of “mini-me”: the idea that performers with dwarfism are just being demeaningly represented as comic or horrific miniatures. But Troyer at any rate tackled and subverted that idea — with confidence, with comic gusto and with charm.

Source: The Guardian April 22, 2018 08:12 UTC