Even among Little People actors, Verne Troyer (1969-1918) ranked as extraordinary.
Standing 2' 8" (two and 2/3 feet) he made actors like Billy Barty or Michael Dunn seem unremarkable. He also was born with a condition that made him hairless. Further, he was born on a farm and raised Amish during his young years, although later his parents got working class jobs outside that culture.
Troyer's first movie jobs were as a body double, often standing in for babies, and this naturally evolved into actual acting jobs when plots called for a Little Person. His most famous role was of course was Mini-Me in the Austin Powers movies. He also played a magical creature in the first Harry Potter movie (2001) and was in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009). Having begun his professional career in the mid '90s, he was also in such films as Men in Black (1997), Rocketman (1997), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), Mighty Joe Young (1998), and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) and on such tv shows as Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Boston Public. He continued to be in demand for film and television roles until the end of his life.
But his personal life seems not to have been happy. In 2008, a sex video of Troyer and his girlfriend was leaked. That's some freak show exploitation right there, and no doubt a good deal of public ridicule went with it that can't have been terribly cheering. A later girlfriend cuckolded him by appearing on Celebrity Wife Swap in 2015. He developed a severe alcohol problem and expressed suicidal thoughts. Obviously, amounts of booze that would be harmless in an average-sized person could be potentially lethal in a person of Troyer's size. He pushed it too far in 2018 and it did its job. He was not yet 50 years old.
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