For a man who spends workdays bedding maidens on wolf pelts and plucking figs from between their perky breasts, Peter Dinklage is oddly resistant to the term "stud." Confronted with this title, as bestowed by GQ, the actor proceeds to shout "STUD?!" for what seems like minutes. "I feel as much of a stud as... I can’t come up with a metaphor. That’s how lacking in studliness I am."

Tyrion Lannister (a.k.a. the Imp), Dinklage’s persona on HBO’s Game of Thrones (for which he won an Emmy this year), is one of those roles that actors dream of: a canny, complicated, debaucherous, bitter but ultimately softhearted sex machine. The show—a deeply entertaining feast of violence and sex based on George R. R. Martin’s fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire—is full of macho individuals (women included) who can seem more like gorgeous chess pieces than full-blooded humans. That may be why Dinklage emerged not only as Throne’s unlikely moral center and comic relief but as its breakout star. This is as much due to his serious acting chops (see The Station Agent) as it is to a career-long willingness to take the piss out of himself (see Elf). "Tyrion was made an outcast by his family, so he—how should I put it?—he doesn’t give a shit," says Dinklage. "But he’s also kind, in a way, and that’s a relief in a show where everybody’s constantly chopping each other’s heads off." Does he find that, since Tyrion, women are looking at him differently? "I never know where women are coming from. I’m still figuring them out, and I’m 42 years old."