Tallest Actors

Hollywood's tallest actors, ranked

Film has always used height as a shortcut. A tall actor reads as a hero, a menace, a monster or a gentle giant before he says a word, and some of the most memorable screen performances depended on a body that simply looked different from everyone else's. This list ranks the thirty tallest well-known actors with a height recorded on Wikidata, from two performers at 218 cm (7′2″) down to a crowded group at 193 cm (6′4″). Their average is about 196.3 cm (6′5″), which is roughly 19 cm taller than the average American man born in 1996 according to the NCD-RisC data on our United States average height page.

Below them sit Christopher Lee and Sterling Hayden at 194 cm, and then a long tie at 193 cm (6′4″) that includes John Wayne, Liam Neeson, Christopher Reeve, Eric Bana, Dave Bautista, Vincent Price, Tom Selleck, Jason Segel and others.

The 7-footers: Richard Kiel and Peter Mayhew

The two actors at the top of the list are the only ones who stood above 7 feet, and both became famous in roles built around their size.

Richard Kiel is recorded at 218 cm on this site; his Wikipedia biography gives 7′1.5″ (217 cm), a difference of about half an inch. He is best remembered as Jaws, the steel-toothed henchman in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979). His career began well before Bond: in 1962 he played the Kanamit aliens, characters written as 9 feet tall, in the Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man." A younger audience knows him as Mr. Larson in Happy Gilmore.

Peter Mayhew is also recorded at 218 cm, matching the 7′2″ (2.18 m) given by the BBC in its 2019 obituary. Wikipedia states that his peak height was 7′3″ (221 cm). The BBC tells the casting story: George Lucas wanted a tall actor for Chewbacca and first considered the 6′6″ David Prowse, but Prowse wanted to play Darth Vader instead. Lucas turned to Mayhew, who was chosen purely for his height, and whose face was never seen. Mayhew played the Wookiee in the original trilogy, in Revenge of the Sith, and shared the role in The Force Awakens (2015). Our Chewbacca page covers the character's own height, which this site lists at 228 cm, and Darth Vader's page covers the role Prowse chose instead.

"Too damn tall": actors warned off the profession

Two of the actors on this list were told at the start that their height would be a problem.

James Cromwell (200.7 cm, 6′7″) told The Guardian in 2021 that after he quit Middlebury College to study at HB Studio in New York, his father said, "Don't be an actor. You're too damn tall." Cromwell decided he would become a director instead and spent about ten years trying, without success, to make it as a theater director, while picking up acting jobs along the way. The acting won out.

Christopher Lee (194 cm) recalled being told by Josef Somlo, when he was offered a film contract, that he was too tall to be an actor, according to his Wikipedia biography. In one early film, the director handled the problem by seating him at a nightclub table so he would not tower over the cast. Lee's height is itself a small case study in conflicting sources: Wikipedia describes his "imposing height" as 6′5″ (196 cm), yet in a 1987 BBC radio interview on Test Match Special he described himself as 6′4″ (193 cm). This site's 194 cm sits between the two.

Jacob Elordi had a related experience in a different field. His Wikipedia biography says he tried modeling at 15 at his mother's suggestion but was told he was too tall for the sample clothes. He is listed there at 1.95 m (6′5″); this site records him at 196 cm.

Tim Robbins and the Oscar question

Wikipedia states that Tim Robbins was, as of 2006, the tallest actor to have won an Academy Award, at 6′5″ (196 cm). This site records him at 200 cm, from his Wikidata entry, which would make him closer to 6′6½″. The two figures differ by about 4 cm, which is larger than the usual rounding noise, so treat his exact rank with some caution: on Wikipedia's figure he would sit in the 196 cm group rather than fourth on his own.

Athletes and wrestlers who became actors

A striking number of the tallest actors arrived in Hollywood from sport, where their size had already been measured and marketed.

• Dwayne Johnson (195.6 cm) was listed at 6′5″ and 253 lb as a defensive tackle at the University of Miami, where his team won the 1991 national championship, and he was billed at the same height as a wrestler. You can compare him with other stars on his height page.
• Dave Bautista (193 cm) is a useful warning about billed heights. His Wikipedia biography notes that WWE advertised him at 6′6″ and 290 lb, while his real height is 6′4″. This site uses the real figure.
• Tommy Lister Jr. (196 cm) was billed at 6′5″ and 300 lb when he wrestled as "Zeus" between 1989 and 1996.
• John Wayne (193 cm) played on the USC Trojans football team under coach Howard Jones; Wikipedia gives his height as 6′4½″.
• Tom Selleck (193 cm) transferred to the University of Southern California to play for its basketball team; he is described there as 6′4″.
• Jason Segel (193 cm) was part of Harvard-Westlake School's 1996 and 1997 state championship basketball teams.

Michael Clarke Duncan (196 cm) came to acting by a different route. His Wikipedia biography says his 6′5″, 315-lb frame helped him in jobs digging ditches for Peoples Energy and working as a bouncer at Chicago clubs before his film career took off.

Studio-era leading men

Height was part of the studio system's star-making. Sterling Hayden, recorded at 194 cm on this site and at 6′5″ (196 cm) on Wikipedia, was promoted by his studio as "The Most Beautiful Man in the Movies." Rock Hudson (196 cm), whom Wikipedia calls a prominent figure of Hollywood's Golden Age, earned a Best Actor nomination for Giant (1956) and made a run of romantic comedies with Doris Day. Vincent Price (193 cm) appeared in more than 100 films, mostly as villains in horror. Christopher Reeve (193 cm) is described in his biography as 6′4″ "but his physique was slim."

Eric Bana (193 cm) became an international name in 2003, when, as Hello! puts it, "the 6ft 4in actor" was cast as Bruce Banner in Ang Lee's Hulk. And Liam Neeson (193 cm) was memorably described by Roger Ebert as "tall and grand" in his review of Rob Roy.

Where the numbers disagree

Actor heights are among the hardest to pin down, because few actors have ever been measured in a documented, public way; most figures are self-reports, studio biographies or, as with Bautista, a promoter's billing. The heights on this page come from Wikidata statements with their references, and for several actors the best available sources disagree:

Most of these gaps are within 2–3 cm, which is about what you would expect from a mix of self-reports, studio biographies and shoe-on estimates. Robbins and Pace are the largest, at about 4–5 cm.

Tall actors in roles that never mentioned their height

Not every tall actor was cast for size. Many of the people on this list built careers in comedy, drama and voice work where height was incidental:

• James Avery (196 cm) is best known as Philip Banks, the father figure in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and also voiced Shredder in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
• Armie Hammer (196 cm) gained wide recognition playing both Winklevoss twins in The Social Network (2010).
• Tyler Perry (195.6 cm) created and plays Mabel "Madea" Simmons, an elderly woman, as well as her brother and nephew.
• Vince Vaughn (195.6 cm) made his name as a comedy lead in films such as Swingers, Old School and Wedding Crashers.
• Zachary Levi (193 cm) starred in the series Chuck and played the title hero in Shazam! (2019), and voiced Flynn Rider in Disney's Tangled.
• George Kennedy (193 cm) won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing "Dragline" in Cool Hand Luke (1967).
• Jason Momoa (195.6 cm) moved from Baywatch: Hawaii and Stargate Atlantis to Khal Drogo in Game of Thrones and then Aquaman in DC's films, roles in which his size was very much part of the character.

How these actors compare with today's stars

For context, some of today's most-searched leading men are well below this list. Hugh Jackman is recorded at 190.5 cm and Ben Affleck at 192 cm, both just short of the 193 cm cut-off. Tom Cruise, at 170 cm, would stand nearly 50 cm below Kiel and Mayhew.

To line up any of these actors with yourself or with each other, use the height comparison tool. More ranked lists, including the tallest female celebrities, are on the tallest hub.