Why is it that height is virtually ignored on television? We always complain about an actor or actress's weight (moreso with the latter, for being too skinny), but we never say anything about one's stature, or, at least we don't do it as often. Is it because this is something that can be "ignored?"

There's nothing anyone can do. You are what you are, and no hormone shots or stretching techniques will change that.

I've been watching the Night Court season 1 DVD, and they use Bull's height for at least one joke an episode.

One I remember is when they go to Bull's apartment, and all of the doorways have a chunk taken out of the top, as if he had smashed through them. And Dan Fielding usually makes a crack or two every episode.

On the commentary for the first episode, Reinhold Weege (the creator) talked about how the disparity between Bull and Selma's height caused them problems in filming. They couldn't do the traditional over the shoulder shot for conversations between them since you'd either be looking 3 feet over Selma's head or right into Bull's stomach. They had to frame a lot of the shots of the two of them from a distance, which made for a recurring visual joke.

Actually, you can. There are people who go through painful surgery to increase their leg length. This form of cosmetic surgery is more common in developing countries, especially China. There was an article about that in the American edition of Marie Claire a few years ago.

I think sometimes it makes a show or even a partnership(Hunter for example) better. Whenever there was a close up shot of Dee Dee and Rick they had to put Stepfanie Kramer(Dee Dee) on a box just so that you could see her. Also in the show "Commander and Cheif" I think it's smart becuase they went with a person who was tall/statuesque. I'm not saying a smaller woman can't play president(I'm 4'11 myself) but I feel that in this world people still see taller women as women who can be more powerful.

They do the same thing with men-that's why politicians always add some numbers to their height listing as do actors. Taller men are seen as being more masculine and more trustworthy.

Rarely do you see a couple where the woman is taller than the man on TV. And if you do it's usually an obstacle or a running joke. But men taller than women is frequent and more socially acceptable it seems.

I read somewhere that they used to have to stand some of the supporting players on Gunsmoke on boxes so they could do two-shots with James Arness. And I'm sure they gave him the biggest horse they could find, but sometimes he still looks like a kid on a Shetland pony perspective-wise, his legs are so long.

On one ep of Maid Marian and Her Merry Men, Tony Robinson's character has to bend down so a "little person" can blindfold him. I found that ironic, since Robinson stands about 5'4" and is usually the shortest guy in the cast, with his height being the butt of many of the jokes. Not this time!

There are behind-the-scenes X-Files photos where Gillian Anderson is standing on a box, because otherwise poor Scully would be straining her neck looking up at Mulder. Their relative height was always changing on the show, depending on how high Scully's heels were that particular episode.

One example I can think of was on L.A. Law, where Jill Eikenberry's character was married to Michael Tucker's. But no mean jokes were made about the difference in their heights, maybe because they were married off-screen. They were devoted to each other. Tucker was kind of roly-poly, too, but cute!

A rare case, as well, of a pair of what David Kelley would consider "unattractive" people who were not completely pathetic and miserable wackos. How refreshing.

I heard that Richard Moll had to wear lifts to make Bull look a lot taller than everyone else. According to IMDb Moll is 6'7"; Harry Anderson & John Larouquette are 6'4" and Charles "Mac" Robinson is 6'2". I think Marcia "Roz" Warfield is probably around 5'10". That's one tall cast.


If you watch Get Smart you'll notice Barbara Feldon is always slouching when she stands next to Don Adams as she was a couple of inches taller than him.

I think you just don't notice height very much on TV. You're seeing people from the waist up most of the time. It's hard to try to guess someone's height on TV, for me anyway. Usually I can guess "tall" or "short" but anything more specific must be googled.

Angel did make fun of Lindsey a few times for being so little.

While it's true you can't change your height, I do think we have certain assumptions about people's height and what it says about their power/personality. That is reflected on TV. For example, short men are usually losers, especially if they're also bald, stocky and have glasses. Short men are shown to be more insecure and have less power than tall men.

And didn't Suddenly Susan constantly make fun of Brooke Shields' height? I think they did those jokes on Third Rock From the Sun too.

This is an interesting point. For a woman, I have always been on the taller end of the spectrum comprared to those I work and interact with (I'm 5'8). Which is probably why I prefer tall men. Anyway, I sometimes found it irksome to see short women on TV, as if there are no women above 5'7 anywhere (unless you're a supermodel). For women at least, I think height and weight are connected - the shorter and smaller you are, the better. Heaven forbid there's a woman above that height that isn't supermodel thin - then she's a big girl. Why can't she just be a tall girl?

As for the men, I realize height is usually something that can't be altered, and find it interesting that shorter men lie about their height. With women seemingly being shorter than average on TV, then I guess that means the guys aren't that tall, either (just appears as such because of the height difference)?

I didn't realize until season 4 of Buffy that Giles and Xander are only average height. I thought they were tall, until I saw Buffy standing next to Riley and realized how tiny-short she and Willow (and Oz) were.

And That 70's Show as well - everyone is constantly referring to Donna as being a giant (and Jackie calls her "Moose" and "Lumberjack" regularly").

I agree. For men, height seems to be the important factor when judging how attractive a guy is.
For women, it seems to be weight, the skinnier, the better. Whether it's tall and skinny or short and skinny doesn't really matter.
For guys, weight doesn't matter that much, as long as the guy is tall enough.



I think this is only partially true. It's not necessarily better to be small and short. But it does influence your image, when you're short and small, you will always be the cute little girl (even when you're 37). Being taller makes you look more independent and adult. Being very tall and very heavy will scare smaller guys away. But I don't think either way is considered better, it depends on what you prefer.

Romano on E.R. was mocked for being short - with a particularly vitriolic insult about it just before the character's exit, which I personally found quite offensive.

C.J. Cregg on The West Wing (Allison Janney) has her height mentioned fairly often. The two best examples I can think of are her sitting next to Big Bird from Seseme Street, and the time she got shocked by Annabeth (played by Kristen Chenowith, who's short of 5' tall, I think) and suggested "it's hard to believe we're the same species".

Also Martin Sheen (who has trouble with names) refered to her as "the tall lady" for ages when the show started, which got a inside joke shout-out some time in the 5th season.

There've been all sorts of throw-away lines on TWW pertaining to CJ's height.

Some Oscar-winning actor once pushed her into a pool in Hollywood and she said something about her being the tall, wet girl in the Donna Karan dress.

Speaking of Kristen Chenowith, I may be hallucinating but wasn't there a scene in TWW where she and CJ were pediconferancing and KC walked underneath a file cabinet that was open? She may've had to duck, but something in the back of my mind is recalling a scene like this.

I think that was a pedaconference with Charlie, when she was meant to be doing the briefings but doing laps walking round looking busy to put off going into the briefing room.

Okay, I totally thought this thread was a joke that would be locked to avoid subsequent threads such as "Eyecolor and television."

Apparently the Smallville set is littered with boxes and ditches because Tom Welling is so tall and all of the female characters are so short (except for Erica Durance). Seriously, they've said that unless you can see his feet, he's acting in bare feet. They've done one scene where he's picked Lana (Kristin Kreuk) up and is hugging her, and then they pan back, and girl's hanging like a foot and a half off the floor. It was unintentionally hysterical.

Of course, that's one of the things I really enjoy about Erica, I like that Lois Lane is someone who's big enough to really stand up to Clark. She's 5'11", no boxes needed!

One of my pet peeves has been when soaps decide that their pretty young star has to have a career as a top runway model even if she's about 5'4". I don't watch soaps much anymore, but the only semi-realistic soap model that I've seen is Nicole on DOOL, who is played by the 5'9" Arianne Zuker. I'll have to suspend disbelief that the character's modeling career was getting started when the actress was 24.

At the same time it bugs me when a show like ANTM or Manhunt (shut up!) factors in a leading contestants' being a bit shorter than the others many weeks into the show. Like they just suddenly noticed that the person is 3 inches shorter than everyone else and now they'll make a big deal out of it.

I don't think it's ignored. But I would think one factor is that in most cases weight can be changed. A person's height is what it is.

On Seinfeld, they always paired George with taller women, and they realistically didn't always reference his height as part of a punchline. (If they did, it didn't seem often.) Granted, I didn't watch the show often, so I could be wrong.

But not more than about a head shorter than the guy. Kissing has to involve two people not more than a head different in height, even if the actress has to be on a box. Serious frenching is always spontaneous. The girl never has to make the guy sit down so she can reach. She never falls off her boots.

No couple is ever a big bulky guy and a girl who comes up to his elbow. Not that I'm bitter.

I always find it impossible to believe Gabrielle on Desperate Housewives is supposed to have been a top fashion model, since Eva Longoria is far shorter than the other women on that show and looks to be about 5' 4". Maybe a Playboy model or something, but not catwalk.

Eva's more like 5'2.

Yeah, she can be a successful model...in another dimension. And they had that ep where Gaby's model friends visited her...and not one of them were model-tall or model-looking, period.

Michael J. Fox is 5'4'', and he was a teen heartthrob in his day. And on "Spin City," he always seemed to be getting women. And speaking of tall women, it seems as if only they can be action figures (Diana Rigg as Emma Peel was 5'9'', Lucy Lawless as Xena was 5'10''). The exception I can think of was Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar at 5'3''---but she had powers).

For me, this of all things is the fakest part of the show. Not the murders, or the assaults, or the kidnappings, or secret love children. While I think PRgal is right, to me Eva looks barely 5 foot nothing especially when she's standing next to Marcia or Susan. And as RealChic1999 mentioned this stuck out even more when her model friends came to visit and they all towered over her. Height aside (and my hate as well for that matter), Eva does not have the face of a Sears Catalogue model let alone a Catwalk one. She has the hair, I'll give her that much.

I think height is a huge consideration, but it's hidden from us, unless we look for it. I admit I'm obsessed with the issue slightly, myself. One thing I can tell you that whenever an actor who appears fairly short is said to be 5'9", it's usually fudged a bit.

Also, House is my current favorite show, and Hugh Laurie is rather tall, at 6'2", and the three other male actors usually look much shorter than he is. If you look them up on imdb, they're all supposed to be only 2-4 inches shorter, but he seems to tower over them at times. Either they're also shorter than they claim, or it's a directorial decision to make House look authoritative.

This also often is an issue on America's Next Top Model and its spin-offs, where they regularly seem to pick contestants who are shorter than the usual height requirements to be a model, only to send them off to go-sees where they get told that, wouldn't you know it, they're not tall enough.

I know Pooki, wasn't there one season of ANTM where a contestant was 5'5"? I would think something like 5'8" should be the absolute minimum for that show.

I have to say when it comes to the NBA, I thought it gave a lot of the shorter guys out there some hope when Mugsy Bogues played, since he's only 5'3".

Davy Jones of the Monkees was another hearththrob who was tiny, I think about 5' 2". But I suppose preteens aren't as harsh critics about that, since they would still be shorter than him, as a rule. Hmm, also, David Cassidy was no giant, either, was he, nor was Leif Garrett. And Jack Wild of H.R. Pufnstuff was another tiny guy adored by young girls.

Maybe shorter teen idols are less threatening to teenyboppers.

Oh, and the late Julia Child was 6'2'' (it was interesting seeing her kitchen exhibit in the Smithsonian). One of my sisters was like, "she was THAT tall?" Height is one of those things that is hard to distinguish when a person is by themselves on TV in their own element. Put an extremely tall person next to an extremely short person on TV, and then it becomes obvious.

Kosher Redneck, last season on Veronica Mars, this actually happened with Veronica and Logan. They had to sit on a bed to make out because Veronica was too short for him to kiss properly.

I was once told that 5'6" is the absolute lowest they will go for runway. There is a famous model who is that height but I can't remember her name.

Yes. And my favorite thing about that is that her sous chef on one of her "...and Company" PBS series was Sara Moulton, who is less than five feet. (Her studio kitchen for her own TV series was specially cut down to conform to her height.) Seeing the two of them side by side in a clip on one of the tribute shows aired after Julia's death was pretty striking -- it took some maneuvering for them to have a reunion hug.

I remember that everyone seemed pretty tall on Xena, it kind of made LL tallness unexceptional really. A good number of the men were taller than her, also a few of the women were around her height or taller. Renee O'Connor was the only person on that show that was really short, and I remember a few jokes here and there about it. SMG was the tinest of tiny people, I could use her as a javelin a make at least 20 meters. Well not really but you get the idea.

George's height discrepancy with most of the women he dated (and later his fiancee Susan) was never really mentioned, although he was routinely described by the others and himself as a "short, stocky bald man."

Kate Moss.

I don't know about Jesse Spencer or Omar Epps, but I can say that Robert Sean Leonard really is 6' or taller (we grew up in the same town, he was a year behind me at the high school and was involved in the theater company - he's a few inches taller than me, and I'm 5' 9").



And if Elaine was angry enough, he was a "short, stocky, slow-witted bald man"!

Christian Kane (Lindsey from AtS) is listed at 5'10" on IMDB, to which, as a fellow short man (5'6"), I call BS.

Freddy Rodriguez (Rico from SFU) is listed at 5'6", which seems about right.

From what I understand, it is usually desirable to pair a shorter man and a taller woman together because it sort of evens out. Sometimes, though, you get a drastic height difference a la Buffy and Riley. There were times you just knew she was standing on a box.

Devon Aoki is 5'6 too.

I think ANTM's height limit is 5'7. I remember it being a big deal in season 2 that Jenascia just made the requirement.

His height was an issue in the episode in India, where he has met a woman when he was wearing Timberlands, and then he worries when he sees her again in normal shoes he will lose 1 1/2 inches, and she will be disappointed. It is a major plot point of the really funny episode, where he vows to wear the Timberlands everytime he sees her, no matter the situation.

"Are those Timberlands...painted black?"

Great episode.

Meadra, I totally thought of Veronica and Logan too when I saw this thread, mainly since I relate. As an Asian woman -- I'm nearly 5'1 -- there has been only one instance where I didn't have to leap up in order to kiss a guy. Then again, I tend to like fairly tall men. But on-topic, I understand that when filming kissy scenes, it probably just looks more cinematically tidy when there's not too big a height difference between the actors. But a kiss scene is a kiss scene, right? And if it's hot, no one will care if one actor is 5'2 and the other is 6'3. But I guess there will always be viewers with a more critical eye for that sort of detail, probably b/c it's something people notice in real life.

I've met Omar Epps and I'd say he's six feet, 5' 11 at worst. Its funny because I had one friend who used to always try to extrapolate actors "real" height (not what they list on their resumes) based upon other actors she had seen in person. So we always had this six degrees of separation conversations going on related to height.

Those experiences brought me to the conclusion that most actors are midgets. My favorite was seeing Nia Long on Third Watch. I've met her before and she is teeny-tiny (between 5ft and 5'2"). I was so disappointed when I realized that some of the really attractive men on that show didn't tower over her but were only three or four inches taller than she was.

James Arness is 6'7. Some of Gunsmoke's fight scenes are ridiculous, because they can't really have the supporting actors standing on boxes while rolling around the saloon floor. I think a lot of the time they had to just go with it.

The flip side is Kristen Bell on Veronica Mars. None of her supporting cast really strikes me as tall, so I very rarely think of KB as being as short as, say, I am, although I think she is.

Kristen is, from what I've read, 5'1". I remember during the Christmas episode from last season, she had a scene with Kyle Secor who has to be at least 6'4" and the scene was dramatic but all I could think of were "Gosh he's tall", immediately followed by "Damn, She's short".