Dinklage found his breakthrough playing Finbar McBride, who is a quiet, withdrawn, unmarried man in the 2003 Tom McCarthy-directed film "The Station Agent". According to co-star Bobby Cannavale, the film took three years to make and was not at first written with Dinklage in mind. Cannavale said McCarthy "set out to tell a story about a guy who was a train enthusiast who had chosen to isolate himself from the world," but when McCarthy actually started "putting pen to paper" for the screenplay he decided to write the role for him. Speaking about the role, Dinklage noted that usually "roles written for someone my size are a little flat"—often either comical or "sort of "Lord of the Rings"" type characters filled with wisdom; further: "They're not sexual, they're not romantic" and "they're not flawed." What attracted him to the character McCarthy had written was that it was not one of the stereotypical roles people with dwarfism play; rather, McBride has "romantic feelings" as well as "anger and ... flaws." The role earned him the Independent Spirit Award and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor nominations. In the "New York Observer", reviewer Andrew Sarris wrote, "Dinklage projects both size and intelligence in the fascinating reticence of his face." Besides being Dinklage's highest-rated film on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, "The Station Agent" was modestly successful at the box office, earning over $8 million against its small budget.