Hollywood mostly sees little people as comic relief, but one actor is demanding a closer look

In the preamble to his mid-'40s novel The Dwarf, Nobel laureate Pär Lagerkvist cleverly funneled a tattered portrait of society through the fingers of an angry dwarf character. Lagerkvist insists the evil in the dwarf's nature is endemic to everyone. Ultimately, the character is evil because he's human - it's a universal inevitability.

By embracing his own integral identity, the dwarf challenges everyone to do the same. With full knowledge of his condition, he evolves into who he is, never again to be mistaken by that same identity. "Most dwarfs are buffoons," he pronounces with a wry vigor born only of personal reference. "They have to make jokes and play tricks to make their masters laugh. I have never demeaned myself to anything like that. No one has even suggested that I should. I am no buffoon. I am a dwarf and nothing but a dwarf."

I, too, am a dwarf and nothing but a dwarf. Sometimes I am a working actor and a published writer. If you will kindly absolve the trespass of my brief stint with Ozzy Osbourne as a performer on the 2001 "Merry Mayhem Tour," then I will also confirm my implacable resistance to making jokes and playing tricks to appease my master. I am no buffoon.

Nor am I an elf, a leprechaun, or, for that matter, Peter Dinklage. Although I revel in the attention, please, you must cease congratulating me for the fine work I did in The Station Agent. In another case of mistaken identity, last month in Beverly Hills, a beautiful woman approached me: "Peter, oh, Peter, how are you? It is so good to see you again. Do you remember when we did this? And don't you remember when we did that?"

Before something more personal was revealed, I confessed. "I am sorry, but I'm not Peter Dinklage."

"You're not?" Her manner indicated confusion and irritation. She wasn't certain she should take me seriously. "Nope," I replied. "My name is Eugene Pidgeon. I have worked with Peter, but I am not Peter."

"Oh," she cautiously retreated. "Very well ... when you see him, then."

This woman, the daughter of film producer Arnold Kopelson, meant no harm and couldn't have been more gracious. But even she was not immune to the goblin of perception. It's not that she should have known better. It's just, perhaps, that she could have known different. Had the universal perception of dwarf actors, and of the dwarf genus altogether, been a little higher, perhaps she would have. But at least she knew Peter's name.

Coincidentally, Arnold Kopelson won a Best Picture Oscar for Platoon in 1986. Among the two-dozen-plus films he has produced is the poignant drama Triumph of the Spirit, starring Willem Dafoe as a Jewish boxer, who, with his entire family, is shipped off to Auschwitz, where millions of Jews were exterminated for nothing greater than malevolent misperception.

More than 15,000 dwarfs were also exterminated in the Nazi death camps. Statistically, this constituted over 80 percent of Europe's known dwarf population at the time. (When Henry Ringling went to Europe in 1947, looking for acts to fill his circuses, he could find no dwarfs. They had disappeared.) The funny thing about those dwarfs was that they didn't have to be Jewish. They didn't need to be Gypsies, homosexuals, or political dissidents. They could have been, and often were, full-blooded Aryan German, replete with blue eyes and blond hair. But they were dwarfs, and therefore a dangerous affront to the concept of Hitler's Master Race.

The Ovitz family of seven dwarfs was saved from a Zyklon-B shower at Auschwitz by Dr. Josef Mengele, who was fascinated by dwarfs. But no banquet or reprieve awaited them. They met only the agony of ridicule and torturous "experiments." Mengele, the "Freak Hunter," often forced them to strip naked and perform for the curious Nazi constabulary. Afterward, he invited his peers to touch the wounds and relentlessly probe the psyches of these poor people.

Ironically and incredibly, the Ovitzes survived. More important, perhaps, they survived the perception Mengele fostered that, because they were dwarfs, they were less than human. Said Perla Ovitz, the last of the seven, who died in 2001: "If I ever question why I was born a dwarf, my answer must be - my handicap, my deformity, was God's way of keeping me alive."

Wish Upon Stars Hollow

Currently, the only dwarf actor with a regular gig in prime-time TV is Michael J. Anderson, who plays Samson on HBO's Carnivale. This uniquely gifted actor has such a dominant presence on screen, it's difficult to even suggest he might be a "little person." "I'm not interested in being normal," Anderson asserts. "I am not interested in generating a half-assed reputation of somebody else's concept of normal." Further, he submits, "All of these genetic variations the Nazis were so opposed to are the very mechanisms by which evolution moves forward. So to disallow and not appreciate people of differences is to hold back the wheels of progress. What can any artist do to improve the world's perception of himself? The answer is to make art."

Sometimes I ask if this handicap was also God's way of making me pursue art, or keeping me employed. I am not a Munchkin, a troll, or an Oompa Loompa. I am just a dwarf actor and one, among way too many, who must invariably settle for these and other similar roles - because, for the most part, they are the only ones we're offered.

I used to be okay with that, actually. I had a great home in Santa Barbara, comfortably between the mountains and the ocean. When there was an audition or a job in L.A., I would just commute. I never thought I would ever leave. Where could have been better?

Then, one fateful Tuesday night, I was introduced to Stars Hollow, Connecticut - the setting of the WB's drama Gilmore Girls. The town seemed so idyllic, so uniformly accepting of all newcomers. It appeared a great place to raise a family, to raise a ruckus, and even to raise an eyebrow. More important, it looked like a great place to raise a perception. Mother-daughter team Rory and Lorelai Gilmore (Alexis Bledel, Lauren Graham) are as charming as they are nuts. Lorelai's best friend and business partner, Sookie (Melissa McCarthy), is insanely self-absorbed, yet generous and loving toward her friends and neighbors. Then there are Lane (Keiko Agena), Michel (Yanic Truesdale), and Kirk (Sean Gunn) ... a galvanic trio of kooky self-doubters as lovely as they are off-center.

I thought Stars Hollow would be a great place for a dwarf - preferably played by me - to live. I could blend in with Lane, who's Korean, and Michel, who's from French Africa or someplace similarly exotic. All that would matter would be who I was, rather than what I was. I thought I would be welcome. For two years - including the last, when I moved block, stock portfolio, and four barrels down from my Santa Barbara Shangri-la - I tried to make that idea a reality. But this year it became clear that I needed to find another passion.

Not Disabled

So, I decided to broaden my scope, and, since last February, I've been lobbying the Screen Actors Guild to create an independent committee, an adjunct to its Committee for Performers with Disabilities (PWD), to address matters relevant to and affecting dwarf actors. Today, we are folded into the PWD, because there's no other outlet available when we need to express a grievance, introduce a motion, or simply have a conversation with someone who will listen.

First of all, many dwarf actors don't consider themselves disabled. Patty Maloney is one of the more visible, and vocal, short-statured performers. Her movie credits include The Addams Family and Ernest Saves Christmas, she was the Crypt Keeper's puppeteer on HBO's Tales from the Crypt, and she's had numerous TV-show guest appearances. For nearly 35 years, she's been surfing the fine line that is Hollywood judgment.

"I don't consider myself disabled. I am short-statured," she asserts confidently. "My priority has always been to do parts where I maintain my dignity and will not do harm to myself or any other person." She understands the difference between roles with substance and those that only exploit. "I'm not one who thinks it is funny to kick someone in the shins, or to run between someone's legs, or to use my size as a gag ... if there is nothing else to it, then it is just a joke." But, she laments, "There are little people who will always do this. They will keep writing that kind of stuff as long as we keep doing it."

Short-statured actor Marcia deRousse - who just closed a successful run in a nontraditional role with the Boston Court Theatre's production of Summertime in Pasadena - is almost as militant as Maloney in her insistence on not being labeled disabled. "I am a little person," she says. "And it is funny how I am treated when I go to a meeting of the Performers with Disabilities. I have even been told I don't belong at that meeting, by other members. They tell me ... 'You are not disabled.' I know that, but ... where else can we go?"

Still, there's resistance to the idea of forming a dwarf committee. Surprisingly, given deRousse's experiences, much of it originates from non-dwarf PWD members. The arguments against greenlighting such a committee include reluctance to give dwarfs a special committee, to a concern that, if dwarfs do get one, it might spark the blind, the deaf, the amputees, and so forth to want their own groups, too, and SAG just doesn't have the resources to manage all that.

Even Danny Woodburn, among the more successful dwarf actors (as the rather nontraditional Mickey Abbott on Seinfeld, among other film and TV credits), believes a separate committee would be counterproductive. "There is no need to bring any more attention to us," he says.

Indeed, many old-school dwarf actors aren't keen on being lumped in with what they perceive as a bunch of whiners who cannot make a career on their own. There's very little to go around, and those who currently inhabit the crest of the food chain don't want to share it. But if the perception of dwarf actors were amended, maybe the dry wells would start to open up. Producers and directors aren't likely to have any epiphanies or crises of conscience ´´ and suddenly think, "Wow, I could have hired a dwarf for this part." We must effect the change ourselves. More opportunities will come, especially in the form of nontraditional casting, when there is less attention to the dwarf and more awareness of the actor.

Every day, we have to teach people how to treat us. In reality, dwarfs are not simply fringe players or caricatures but are teachers, lawyers, workers, managers, doctors - even alcoholics, criminals, and creeps. We should be integrated into the common fabric of life and rewarded accordingly with the roles and opportunities our union dues and taxes warrant.

"How do you cast a little person?" asks Ed Gale, who played Charles Durning's political aide in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (not to mention the title role in Howard the Duck). "Like, for instance, in the role of an executive bank owner, bank president, or even a bank teller? In society today, I have never seen a little person as any one of these. How do you expect Hollywood to create an image for us when we haven't?"

Gale shakes his head. "We need to first convince Hollywood that it not only has to put us in nontraditional roles, but also in nonspecific roles. For instance, we have to be in line at the bank, and when the bank gets robbed, the robber doesn't pick us up and stuff us in a suitcase," he says. "Hollywood needs to makes us commonplace."

For Dinklage, fame has opened doors to nontraditional roles: Later this month, he'll star in Shakespeare's Richard III at New York City's Public Theater. Yet, awareness of the actor can unexpectedly trump nontraditional intentions - for Mulholland Dr., David Lynch cast Anderson as a mysterious executive who was supposed to be of average size, but most critics perceived the character as a dwarf.

As far as Anderson is concerned, "Hollywood has the right to discriminate," he says. "They need to put somebody in there who is tall and black to play Magic Johnson. They need little people to play elves, or they don't look like elves," he says. "As for our littleness, is it a deficit or a resource ... an obstacle or an intro? Being a little person can help or hinder you, depending upon what you make of it."

Out of the Picture

Practically speaking, it's not only about raising perceptions of dwarf actors by petitioning for nontraditional roles. It's also about protecting the roles we already have. One example is the diminishing opportunity for dwarfs to work as stand-ins. What used to be a windfall for us is now in danger of evaporating. A dwarf actor could often count on standing in for a child, but now, with production companies concerned about sculpting budgets, they're hiring smaller actors, not dwarfs, who can double as a stand-in for a child and also stand in for a young adult on the same production. That's physically prohibitive for most dwarf actors, so these opportunities could be eliminated altogether if no one protests too loudly.

We are also effortlessly being supplanted by computer-generated effects. Gary Oldman assumed dwarf guise in the 2003 Matthew Bright-directed vapor lock Tiptoes, which was noble in conception yet faltered in presentation. Bright was brave enough, at least, to explore the idea of a dwarf character propelling a feature film. Yet, Tiptoes executive producer Darryl Marshak told me confidently that he thinks more productions will feature nontraditional roles for all types of actors. All right - if we expect others to create nontraditional casting choices for dwarf actors, then once in a while we can relent on the nontraditional choices made by actors like Oldman.

But such latitude should not necessarily be accorded to movies like The Lord of the Rings trilogy or Moulin Rouge. In Rings, the prominent dwarf role of Gimli was computer-generated away from us to accommodate John Rhys-Davies, who most definitely is not a dwarf. In Moulin Rouge, John Leguizamo was cast as Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. However, there is no legal way to enforce our expectations. Can we really fight it?

Anderson doesn't believe computer generation is hurting dwarf actors. "I will play a scene," he says, "then the director will ask me ... if next time can I play it a little more angry or with a little more fear. Now, if they want to do the same thing with a computer-generated character, it will take them a whole week to get another take. They have to program that sucker."

Gale had his own experience with CGI on the forthcoming animated holiday release The Polar Express, starring Tom Hanks. "I had to come in and do 57 takes of this and that," he says. "Now they own me and can do anything they want with me. When they CG those images, they don't even need me anymore."

Unfortunately, many dwarf actors believe that if they speak out, they'll be branded as troublemakers. So, we stay quiet, hoping our civility and willingness to comply with just about anything will endear us to producers and casting directors, who may throw out a crumb or two. But if SAG had a dwarf committee, it would be the first step toward dismantling the prosaic perceptions of dwarfs as performers and would help to engender a new, more enlightened perception of us as a vital component of society.

According to Angel Rivera, national director of SAG's Affirmative Action/Diversity department, in order to get a motion such as ours addressed, "Any member can bring an idea to the attention of the staff or a board member or a committee member." A debate follows, and each committee decides what happens next, whether to vote, hold more meetings, or do additional research. The final meeting to determine our petition's fate will be held at SAG on Monday, September 13.

The current Committee for Performers with Disabilities may simply have way too broad a scope to invest enough time and muscle to help dwarf actors. A very powerful example lies in the prominent omission of any short-statured actors from the first SAG casting showcase for performers with disabilities, mounted in conjunction with CBS's Diversity Institute on April 28. Many of the better dwarf actors in Hollywood participated in the auditioning process. Yet, when it came time to cast the show, none was invited.

That was disheartening. And it's time to reevaluate your field position when a network as progressive as CBS purports to be, and a SAG committee as ecumenical as the PWD wants us to believe it is, both virtually ignore the dwarf actors' community while implying that they're reaching out and making a difference.

Robert David Hall, chairman of the national PWD committee and one of the event's organizers, is quick to note the PWD had no influence on casting protocol for the showcase. He says all casting was done strictly at CBS's discretion. Well, then, this case proves the PWD isn't effectively serving the needs of dwarf actors. Perhaps the exclusion wouldn't have been so easily processed, had there been a committee in place to protect our interests.

The Amazing Race

Discrimination against dwarf actors is subtle and easily denied. Casting agents or producers can simply suggest that dwarfs' auditions weren't up to their standards. But I know better. Still, unlike the African Americans who had to forge their identity through a bulwark of white sheets and burning crosses, or the Jews who so bravely challenged the swastika, we dwarfs have no obvious foe. Ours is not a proposition of direct confrontation. The prejudice against us - and which we have against ourselves - is lethally invisible.

We can't even reach a consensus about how we should be addressed. One group wants to be called "little people." Another demands to be addressed as "midget," and still others are satisfied with "dwarf." It took me more than 30 years to say the word "dwarf" without it clogging my very throat. When I was a child growing up in the upper-class registers of Memphis, Tennessee, we were not allowed to use that word in the household.

In the long run, people aren't going to be struck by a bolt of lightning that tells them to change their perceptions. If we wait for that, we might as well wait for friggin' Moses to come back and challenge the "evildoers" to let our people grow. Certainly, people won't change their attitudes because it's the right thing to do. And why should they? No one is obligated to love us. But they had better recognize us. It's not going to happen naturally. We have to do it ourselves.

There is hope, and there is despair. Contrast, for example, two recent pop-culture outings featuring dwarfs: Fox Television's midget-mating melee The Littlest Groom, and CBS's The Amazing Race #5.

If nothing else, The Littlest Groom - a reality show in which dwarf Glen Foster chose a mate from among little people and women of average size - certainly proved we still have a "gawk factor." Over two hour-long episodes, you only got vague glimpses of the real person. Indeed, it's been done before, and better, way back in 1932 with Tod Browning's classic fetishist film Freaks.

That movie had the most eerily ambitious collection of dwarfs and biological curiosities available at the time. Gossip columnist Louella Parsons was so dually appalled and fascinated that she wrote, "It is more fantastic and grotesque than any show ever written." Browning, unlike Fox Television and LMNO Productions, parents of The Littlest Groom, got past the gawk factor. Repulsion turns to pathos, and pathos to empathy, as the main character - a man not unlike Fox's bachelor - fell for a woman of average stature. Could she ever love him? That was even the tag line on the promotional posters.

"Can a full-grown woman ever love a midget?" Well, maybe not until she realizes that a midget is full grown, too. Browning understood this and held a mirror to his audience's face. Sadly, few even noticed their own reflections. But Fox never even bothered to put up the mirror.

CBS was different. With The Amazing Race, the same network that did not invite dwarf actors to participate in the April 28 showcase gave the entire world a look into what it is to be a dwarf.

Her name was Charla. She was a 27-year-old dwarf teamed with her average-sized cousin, Mirna. She nobly embraced the gamut that was, in all senses of the word, an amazing race. It was amazing because no allowances were made for her. She had to eat what they ate, run where they ran, endure what everyone else endured. What began as a gawk fest ended as a rallying cry from all who watched her take her punishment and ask for no more than her fair chance, even as one contestant publicly declared, "No matter what I have to do ... I am not gonna be beaten by a midget!" ("Midget" may be an accepted term to describe the physicality of short people, but this contestant made it a slur, as degrading as the N-word.)

Charla and her cousin outlasted six other pairs of contestants and weren't eliminated until the seventh round. Tears welled in her eyes as she said farewell, only wanting us to know she gave it her best and was sorry for letting her cousin down. She had no idea how much she had lifted the world, or herself. In The Amazing Race, maybe for the first time ever, the world got to see who we are, and we got to see who some of you are, too. Maybe we both just need a new pair of glasses.