Peter Dinklage contemplates his future in cinema at the Berlin Film Festival

Some actors put up diminishing returns in their performances over time, but many of our best actors continue to get better with age. It would be a shame to miss out on some of those more mature performances, but at the same time no one could blame a star for wanting out of the circus (or for wanting to escape Hollywood’s notorious ageism). All of these, presumably, are part of Peter Dinklage’s own contemplations for his future, as he expressed during a press conference at the Berlin Film Festival.

“I’m 53. I wonder if I want to be an actor for the next 30 years,” Dinklage said while promoting the new film She Came To Me (per Variety). “It’s a fork in the road. It’s a common story when you hit 50: There’s a fork in the road and you either wait for inspiration or you seek it out, and I intend to keep seeking it out.”

“Actors sit around waiting for the jobs to come,” he added. “Painters can paint, writers can write, musicians can play… actors don’t have that ability. So, we have to wait around or create and collaborate on our own things. The question is, what inspires you? What inspires me is the written word at that point in my life. I couldn’t have played this [role] 20 years ago or 20 years from now.”

She Came To Me, directed by Rebecca Miller, is described by Deadline as a “light but pungent” ensemble romantic comedy starring Dinklage, Marisa Tomei, and Anne Hathaway. Dinklage’s character, who serves as Tomei’s romantic obsession, is an opera composer dealing with a creative block. He leads the film “with a fusion of cunning and grace,” per Variety’s Owen Gleiberman.

At the press conference, Dinklage noted that choosing roles has “so much to do with where you are in your own life—creatively, non-creatively—and Rebecca brought this to me at the perfect point in my life.” Here’s to many more years of Dinklage on screen.