Page 49 - ABILITY Magazine - Avril Lavigne Issue

Woodburn being frisked before the interview, found several disturbing objects, but no weapons
throwing each other around, shaking each other by the lapels, he was all over the place, and just sort of keeping me from falling over. He was throwing himself left and right, and it looked like I was shaking the living day- lights out of him, but it was really him doing it, and I was just hanging on to make sure I didn’t hit the ground.
out of the 200 different appearances on things that I’ve made that I’ve played an elf character. Once for that series of movies for the kids and offhand, I can’t even think of another time. I was a character dressed as an elf—but not necessarily an elf—like a guy who’s doing a job, but not an elf per se. It’s peculiar.
(laughter)
My thing about playing any kind of character that is fantastical is that there has to be dimensionality to it. If it’s just somebody showing up and standing in a room and being an elf or being a gnome or a dwarf, it’s not something I would do. The interesting thing to me is that little people seem to be the only ones criticized for that, whereas when we see every character in The Hobbit series played by an average-sized person, nobody makes any commentary about that. I spoke to CNN Headline News live regarding the depiction of little people in Mirror, Mirror, and I got a lot of flak for it. I’ve had casting agents say of me, “He could never play a doctor.” It’s an absurd thing to say when the chief of orthopedic pediatrics at Johns Hopkins is a person with achondroplastic dwarfism. Which is why when Peter Dinklage plays this Game of Thrones char- acter, everybody goes bonkers because they’ve never necessarily seen that kind of role for such an extended period of time.
He was very gracious, and he invited me to his house to watch the episode I was in with him. That had never happened to me before, and it hasn’t happened since.
Martirosyan: You know, I Googled your name and found something on a Wikipedia page, I’ll keep my opinion quiet for now. It says, “Born July 26th, American film, television, and stage actor who may be best known for having played Mickey Abbott on the sitcom Seinfeld. He has dwarfism. As a result, his most common roles are Christmas elves.”
Woodburn: I don’t know who posted that, but clearly it’s not somebody who knows my work.
Martirosyan: So not only did I want to know what you think about that, but also wanted to put it out there so someone could change it.
When somebody says, “Why is this average-sized per- son being shrunk down to play a little person?”
Woodburn: I can count, on one hand, how many times
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