Jon Stewart:  My guest tonight: an actor who can currently be seen in Elf and The Station Agent…(video clip)…please welcome Peter Dinklage!

Peter Dinklage:  (enters, waves to applauding audience, shakes hands) 

Jon Stewart:  Welcome, sir.  You’re a star!

Peter Dinklage:  No!

Jon Stewart:  Yes!

Peter Dinklage:  Yes!

Jon Stewart:  It’s happened!

Peter Dinklage:  Bring it!

Jon Stewart:  Yes!

Peter Dinklage:  I don’t know!

Jon Stewart:  You’ve been acting for how long?

Peter Dinklage:  I just realized I’m chewing gum…that’s kind of rude.

Jon Stewart:  (offers card with interview questions, which Pete pretends to spit his gum onto)  You can do that.  I wasn’t going to ask you these questions anyway.

Peter Dinklage:  (Pretending to stick it under Stewart’s desk…Stewart is somewhat taken aback)  No, I’m still chewing it.

Jon Stewart:  You do realize that our next guest will have to eat that.

Peter Dinklage:  (laughs)  Okay, that’s fine.

Jon Stewart:  And it’s presidential candidate Dick Gephardt.

Peter Dinklage:  Excellent!

Jon Stewart:  You’ve been acting for a long time…yet these two…The Station Agent has gotten great acclaim, it’s a great movie…and now suddenly you walk down the street and actresses such as Jessica Lange stop you.

Peter Dinklage:  (laughs)  Well, you sort of stop when you see her.  It was in the Daily News today…I don’t know how it happened, but yesterday I was on my way to this store down in Soho and…wow, she comes up to me… “I love The Station Agent!”…and “I love you!”

Jon Stewart:  She said that?

Peter Dinklage:  No, she said she loved the movie, and I said I loved Jessica Lange.  (laughs)  I don’t know what I said.  But it was cool.

Jon Stewart:  Is that when you started making out?  Is that what happened?  Did it get a little crazy?

Peter Dinklage:  Yeah, totally.  (laughs)

Jon Stewart:  Not so bad.  Is this a strange…you know, for somebody who has been acting for a long time to suddenly get this kind of notoriety, has it been fun to handle?  Is it stressful?

Peter Dinklage:  It’s been really good, because a lot of …you know, because of my size, I get a lot of  whispers and points and whatever, different reactions, and now I just blame it on me being a celebrity.

Jon Stewart:  (laughs)

Peter Dinklage:  (primps)  “Well, they obviously saw the movie!  Thank you!”  Not because I’m…

Jon Stewart:  (laughs while audience applauds)

Peter Dinklage:  It’s a form of denial that I’m working on.

Jon Stewart:  I think that’s wise.

Peter Dinklage:  (bursts into tears)

Jon Stewart:  (laughs)  Have you been getting to travel a lot with this, though?  Has this movie been getting released around the world, or is this just going to be a…

Peter Dinklage:  It is, yes.  We’re going to Paris in about a week.  I was in Morocco.

Jon Stewart:  Really?

Peter Dinklage:  Yeah.

Jon Stewart:  Had you ever been there before?

Peter Dinklage:  No.  I’d never really found the time to go to Morocco…or a reason to go to Morocco.

Jon Stewart:  (laughs)

Peter Dinklage:  But I had dinner with the prince…me and about two thousand other people, so it wasn’t an intimate dinner.

Jon Stewart:  Did you get to meet the prince?

Peter Dinklage:  No, no.

Jon Stewart:  What, was he just throwing a big hoedown where anybody could go…?

Peter Dinklage:  Yeah.  (laughs)  It was a slam-dang good ol’ time.  But it’s really weird, at the head table everybody eats at his tempo…if he takes a drink everybody drinks at the same time.  So if I were the prince I’d be like…(mocks sips to tease a reaction)...

Jon Stewart:  (laughs)

Peter Dinklage:  It’s really strange.

Jon Stewart:  If you were Ashton Kutcher you would do that.  If you’re the prince…

Peter Dinklage:  “Dude, the prince is punked!”

Jon Stewart:  (laughs)  Are you sure it was other people, or was the prince…have you ever seen those Jackson Five things where it’s one guy, and everyone is attached by broomsticks?

Peter Dinklage:  (laughs)

Jon Stewart:  He might not have had a head table. 

Peter Dinklage:  That’s true.

Jon Stewart:  It might have all been puppets.

Peter Dinklage:  (laughs)

Jon Stewart:  What did they serve?  Something delicious?  Was it good?

Peter Dinklage:  Uh…I don’t remember.

Jon Stewart:  Hummus?

Peter Dinklage:  Hummus, yes.  (laughs)  They served this drink that was a cinnamon drink…it was like drinking a piece of Big Red…it was really weird.  Like liquid Big Red.

Jon Stewart:  Was it booze?

Peter Dinklage:  No.  You can’t drink over there, there was no drinking.  They don’t know how to…it was really not a good time.  (laughs)

Jon Stewart:  Can I tell you something?  It is good that I don’t travel, because I have a feeling that I would end up in prison.

Peter Dinklage:  Yeah.

Jon Stewart:  Now, where are you from?

Peter Dinklage:  New Jersey.

Jon Stewart:  Ah, okay…compadres!  You know, in New Jersey it’s mandatory that you drink.

Peter Dinklage:  I know, it is.

Jon Stewart:  It’s the only thing you’re allowed to do.

Peter Dinklage:  Well, it’s the only thing that passes the time.

Jon Stewart:  (laughs)  And this movie The Station Agent takes place in New Jersey, does it not?

Peter Dinklage:  Yes it does, which was fun because Mom and Dad came and visited the set.  We were shooting someplace…my Mom’s whole family is from that area of New Jersey, and we were shooting at a restaurant one day and I heard “Hey Pete!” and it’s my little cousin who is a waiter there.  So it was sort of… (pauses as he notices the silence in the audience, then begins to mimic the sound of crickets chirping)

Jon Stewart:  (laughs)  I think they were all just feeling badly for your cousin!

Peter Dinklage:  Yeah… “Hey kid, fix me something!”  (laughs)

Jon Stewart:  Right.  To run into your movie star cousin, and you have to fetch him a muffin.

Peter Dinklage:  I pretended I didn’t know him.

Jon Stewart:  What’s the next thing, the next role?

Peter Dinklage:  I don’t know…I’ve been working in the theater.

Jon Stewart:  Theater stuff?

Peter Dinklage:  Theater stuff.  I’ve been working at Lincoln Center doing a production of Toulouse Lautrec, which is a great piece.

Jon Stewart:  I never miss a…(grasps helplessly for the title before giving up, mocks choking gestures at Pete)…Dinklage!!!

Peter Dinklage:  (laughs)

Jon Stewart:  Stay out of the gossip papers , my friend, because I keep seeing you in the Daily News and the Post and all that.

Peter Dinklage:  (shrugs)  I just live my life.  I don’t know.

Jon Stewart:  You live your life on the edge!

Peter Dinklage:  (laughs)

Jon Stewart:  The Station Agent and Elf are in theaters now…Peter Dinklage, everybody!