The Height of Tom Cruise

The World’s Biggest Star

For reasons that are somewhat unfathomable to me, Tom Cruise, perhaps the last of the major movie stars, has become a byword synonymous with short stature.

He remains, at sixty, remarkably handsome and charismatic, his talent undiminished, and while he continues to perform his own stunts with grace and athleticism, the adjective that pops from many people’s mouths when they hear his name is “short”.

I have stood beside Tom on several occasions and can testify that his stature is close to middling range. I am 5’9, which is the height of the average American man, so I am therefore a rather good gauge of male altitude. I maybe have a half-inch on him, but no more.

He is roughly the same height as some other leading men including Robert Downey Jr, Jamie Foxx, Joaquin Phoenix, Tom Holland, Robert DeNiro, Michael Keaton, Steven Yeun, Taron Egerton, Donald Glover, Jack Nicholson, Kiefer Sutherland, Johnny Depp, Jackie Chan, Mel Gibson, Casey Affleck, Jared Leto, John Boyega, Antonio Banderas, Mark Wahlberg, Daniel Kaluuya, Mark Ruffalo, Sean Penn, Ben Foster, Zac Efron, Kit Harington, Anthony Ramos, Don Cheadle, Kurt Russell, Willem Dafoe, Gary Oldman, Oscar Isaac, Jeremy Renner, Eddie Murphy, Shia LaBeouf, and Tom Hardy.

And no one ever comments on these striking gentlemen’s size.

I apologize for being so “listful,” but I am far from listless when it comes to the subject of celebrity height.

Why is Tom Cruise constantly portrayed as an especially small man?

I can only assume that it’s because he has been married to three tall women, who all wear heels on the red carpet, and he often chooses, as he is usually a producer as well as the star of many of his films, to cast tall leading ladies.

In the latest Top Gun: Maverick, his love interest is Jennifer Connelly, who stands a tallish 5’7 and Tom is definitely taller than she is. In the first Top Gun from 1986, the leading ladies were 5’10 Kelly McGillis and Meg Ryan, 5’8.

He’s also starred with Cameron Diaz, who is 5’9, and 5’7 inchers, Emily Blunt and Rebecca Ferguson.

His future second wife Nicole Kidman was cast opposite Tom in 1990s Days of Thunder, which became the first of three motion pictures in which the couple shared the screen. I’ve stood beside the beauteous Nicole and she is close to 5’11.

Nicole doesn’t seem to favor especially tall men, as she tends to tower over her Tom-size husband Keith Urban and her Tom-size ex-boyfriend Lenny Kravitz.

I recently faced Katie Holmes, the third Cruise wife, at a New York party celebrating The Moth’s 25 years. She is my size, 5’9, and her cute new boyfriend, musician Bobby Wooten III, stands either the same height or ever so slightly shorter than Katie, in Tom’s range.

Actress Mimi Rogers, Tom Cruise’s first wife, is 5’8.

Between his marriages to Nicole and Katie, Tom dated the exquisite 5’5” Penelope Cruz and looked tall beside her. The same with another ex, 5’6 Rebecca De Mornay. But he chose to marry statuesque ladies rather than petite or mid-size ones.

I wonder if Tom had married Penelope or Rebecca or even 5’7 Cher (although she certainly looks even taller with her elaborate hair and headdresses), whether he might not have garnered the reputation as a particularly vertically challenged man.

Clearly, Tom is comfortable enough with his height to not make his tall leading ladies walk in trenches. Nor does he choose to stand on boxes or platforms.

A Brief Height History of Leading Men

In old movies, the leading man almost always appeared taller than the leading lady. Many actors who emerged between Hollywood’s Golden Age and the 1950s were exceptionally tall for their generations, well over six feet, including Gary Cooper, James Stuart, Cary Grant, Burt Lancaster, Charlton Heston, Errol Flynn, Ronald Reagan, Clark Gable, Gregory Peck, Joel McCrea, Johnny Weissmuller, Robert Mitchum, Melvyn Douglas, Vittorio Gassman, Paul Henreid, Ray Milland, Anthony Quinn, Harry Belafonte, Yves Montand, Mel Ferrer, Clint Eastwood, Sidney Poitier, Peter O’Toole, Michael Caine, James Garner, Victor Mature, Anthony Perkins, Joseph Cotton, Randolph Scott, Henry Fonda, Sean Connery, Rock Hudson, Fred MacMurray, and John Wayne.

(And most of the leading ladies tended to be petite with a few exceptions like Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Katherine Hepburn, Doris Day, Rosalind Russell, Alexis Smith, and Greta Garbo, who were lucky to have so many choices for their leading men)

Sorry to continue my “listyness.”

But They Were Not All Super-Sized

Oscar-winning 5’8 actor Yul Brynner famously insisted that the exceptionally tall (especially for that era) 5’10 Ingrid Bergman walk in a trench while filming Anastasia. I am not sure any such arrangements were made while Bergman filmed Casablanca, even though she was taller than the 5’8 Humphrey Bogart.

Bogie and his 5’8 wife Lauren Bacall stood eye to eye in The Big Sleep but that visual was rare in the 1940s.

The noted tough guy actor Alan Ladd was only around 5’5 and was cast opposite 5’9 Sophia Loren (and yes, that is her accurate height as I have stood beside her too) in Boy on a Dolphin. Scenes were shot where he’s standing on a deck and she is standing in a wooden boat beneath Ladd and the dock.

Ladd was most often cast opposite Veronica Lake, who at 4’11 was the shortest of all Hollywood leading ladies of her era, and was considered a “Pocket Venus”.

No taller than 5’7, James Dean was another star always cast with petite women during his abbreviated career: Julie Harris in East of Eden, Natalie Wood in Rebel Without a Cause, and Elizabeth Taylor in Giant.

Like many of the stars who emerged in the 1970s, Al Pacino is not tall. He’s noticeable short. And mesmerizing and manly. Pacino stands around 5’6, and yes, I have stood beside the soulful-eyed machismo-emitting actor. And like Cruise, he has never seemed to mind taller leading ladies on film and in life, including the 5’8 Swiss actress Marthe Keller and the 5’7 Diane Keaton. No boxes or trenches or platform shoes have been required in Pacino’s films.

Paul Newman appeared close to Tom Cruise in height, perhaps a fraction of an inch taller, as exhibited in The Color of Money, for which Newman won his Academy Award, but during his long career, I doubt if there was ever a remark uttered about Newman’s height, just admiration for his stunning looks and talent and philanthropy. His wife, Joanne Woodward, at 5'4, never loomed over Paul.

There was another famous man, more heralded than Tom Cruise, whose name became synonymous with diminutive size and even a short man’s psychological complex: General and Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

Scholars have recently challenged the belief that Napoleon was particularly small in stature. He actually stood around 5’6 or 5’7, which was considered slightly above average in France, circa 1800.

Marlon Brando played Napoleon in 1954’s Desiree. Considered the greatest actor of his generation, Brando stood just under 5’9, the same height as Tom Cruise.