How tall is Johnny Depp?

How tall is Johnny Depp?

Johnny Depp is 178 cm, which is about 5′10″. That figure is the height statement on his Wikidata entry, the open database used by many reference sites, and it is the value this site uses. Wikidata attributes it to a 2006 article on the heights of Hollywood stars in the Spanish newspaper 20minutos. That page no longer loads at its original address, so the reference cannot be rechecked directly, but the figure has remained the standard listing for years.

Like most actors, Depp has never released a measured height. The 178 cm listing should be read as the best-established public figure, and it is consistent with how he compares with co-stars whose heights are better documented, from Winona Ryder to Leonardo DiCaprio.

From Kentucky and Florida to Los Angeles

John Christopher Depp II was born in Owensboro, Kentucky, the youngest of four children of Betty Sue Depp, a waitress, and John Christopher Depp, a civil engineer. The family moved often and settled in Miramar, Florida, in 1970. His parents divorced in 1978, when he was 15.

Music came first. His mother gave him a guitar at 12, and he dropped out of Miramar High School at 16 to play in rock bands. His band The Kids moved to Los Angeles in search of a record deal. There, his then-wife introduced him to the actor Nicolas Cage, who encouraged him to try acting and helped him get an audition with Wes Craven for A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). Depp later said he "ended up acting by accident."

Cage is a useful first comparison. The site lists him at 183 cm, about 5 cm (2 inches) taller than Depp.

Career highlights

Depp's career has run from teen television to some of the highest-grossing franchises in film history. His films have grossed over $10.8 billion worldwide, and he has received a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild Award and three Academy Award nominations.

21 Jump Street, in which he played an undercover police officer working inside a high school, made him a teen idol in the late 1980s. He took the part partly to work with the actor Frederic Forrest, but grew disillusioned with the teen-idol image and afterwards chose roles he found interesting over ones he expected to be hits. That choice led to his long run with Tim Burton, which also produced Alice in Wonderland (2010), with Depp as the Mad Hatter; it took about $1.025 billion at the box office, making it the second-highest-grossing film of that year.

His three Oscar nominations, all for Best Actor, came for Jack Sparrow in The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), J. M. Barrie in Finding Neverland (2004) and the title role in Sweeney Todd (2007).

Johnny Depp next to his co-stars

Because Depp is close to average height for an American man, his co-star comparisons swing both ways. He is taller than most of his leading women and several of his male co-stars, and shorter than a handful of tall leading men. The site's data gives these heights:

Edward Scissorhands and Winona Ryder

Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands (1990) was the start of a partnership that ran to eight films. Burton conceived the character from a drawing he made as a teenager of a thin, solemn man with long blades for fingers, an image that reflected his own sense of isolation in suburban Burbank. Winona Ryder was the first cast member attached to the script, and Fox pushed Burton to meet other actors, including Tom Cruise, for the lead before Depp was chosen.

Ryder is listed at 161 cm, about 17 cm shorter than Depp. The film grossed more than four times its $20 million budget, and both Burton and composer Danny Elfman have called it their most personal work. In 1990 Depp proposed to Ryder, whom he had begun dating the year before.

What's Eating Gilbert Grape and a teenage DiCaprio

In Lasse Hallström's What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), a drama about a dysfunctional family, Depp played the title character opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and Juliette Lewis. The film did not do well commercially, and most reviews focused on DiCaprio, who received an Academy Award nomination. DiCaprio was still a teenager during filming, but as an adult he is listed at 185.4 cm, about 7 cm taller than Depp, so the young co-star who was smaller on set grew into the taller man.

Donnie Brasco and Al Pacino

Mike Newell's Donnie Brasco (1997) paired Depp, as the undercover FBI agent Joseph Pistone, with Al Pacino as the aging mobster who takes him under his wing. To prepare, Depp spent time with Pistone, whose memoirs were the basis of the film. Pacino is listed at 168 cm, so Depp stood about 10 cm taller. The two reunited decades later on Modì, Three Days on the Wing of Madness (2024), Depp's first film as director in more than 25 years, about 72 hours in the life of the painter Amedeo Modigliani. Pacino appears in the film and co-produced it with Depp's European company.

Sleepy Hollow and Christina Ricci

Burton's Sleepy Hollow (1999) cast Depp as Ichabod Crane opposite Christina Ricci and Christopher Walken. At 153 cm, Ricci is the shortest co-star in the table, about 25 cm (10 inches) shorter than Depp. The pair worked together again in Sally Potter's The Man Who Cried (2000).

Jack Sparrow and building a character

Depp's most famous role, Captain Jack Sparrow, made him a global star with Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). He has said he modeled the character on the Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and the cartoon skunk Pepé Le Pew, and he has described the pirate as a large part of his own personality. A Fandango survey found that Depp's performance was the main reason many cinemagoers chose to see a Pirates film.

Depp reprised the role in Dead Man's Chest (2006) and At World's End (2007), both major box-office successes, and also voiced the character in a video game. Penélope Cruz, who joined the series in On Stranger Tides (2011), is listed at 168 cm, about 10 cm shorter than Depp; the two are set to reunite in Marc Webb's thriller Day Drinker.

The musician behind the actor

Depp never fully left music. Before acting he was a guitarist in Florida and Los Angeles bands, co-writing the song "Mary" for Rock City Angels' debut album on Geffen Records. Later he played on recordings by Oasis, Shane MacGowan, Iggy Pop, Aerosmith, Marilyn Manson and Vanessa Paradis, among others, and he formed the rock supergroup Hollywood Vampires with Alice Cooper and Joe Perry.

His film musicals drew on that background too. Sweeney Todd (2007) was his first screen role that required him to sing, and it earned him his third Oscar nomination.

Weight and physical transformations

No official source lists Depp's weight, so this page does not give one. His best-known transformations have come from character work rather than reported weight change: the scissor-handed Edward, the candy maker Willy Wonka, the murderous barber in Sweeney Todd, and the Boston crime boss Whitey Bulger in Black Mass (2015). Critics received Black Mass better than several of his films from the same period. In 2023 he took on a new challenge of a different kind, playing Louis XV in Jeanne du Barry, his first film performed in French, which opened the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

How Johnny Depp compares with the average American man

Depp was born in 1963. The NCD-RisC estimates used on the site's United States average height page put the average American man born in 1956 at 177.2 cm and one born in 1976 at 177.5 cm. At 178 cm, Depp is less than a centimeter taller than the average man of his generation: as close to typical as a leading man gets.

The CDC's measured national survey for 2015–2018 tells the same story. American men aged 20 and over averaged 175.3 cm, with a median of 175.4 cm and a 75th percentile of 180.2 cm. Depp's 178 cm puts him at about the 60th to 65th percentile. Among men aged 60 to 69, the age group he belongs to today, the average was 174.4 cm.

You can see where any height falls with the height percentile calculator.

A star of ordinary height

Depp's career is a good example of how little height determines screen presence. At 178 cm he is almost exactly average for an American man born in the 1960s, shorter than DiCaprio and Cage, and taller than Pacino and most of his leading women. His most famous characters, from Edward to Jack Sparrow, owe their scale to costume, makeup and movement rather than stature.

To compare him with anyone else in the database, use the height comparison tool or the height difference calculator. The celebrities hub lists hundreds more actors.