Who is the tallest actor to win an Oscar?
There’s an amusing adage that Hollywood movie stars are always shorter in real life than they appear on screen. It’s not always true, obviously, and any idea that stars are always diminutive is probably caused by the warped perspective an audience gets from watching larger-than-life characters on a big screen. However, there have always been stars in Hollywood to whom this adage most definitely doesn’t apply. These stars are every bit as tall as they seem in real life, and several of them have been nominated for the industry’s biggest prizes at the Oscars.
Speaking of the tallest people Hollywood has to offer, it begs the question: Who is the tallest person to ever win an Academy Award? Well, that honour belongs to six feet and nine inch German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who won ‘Best International Feature Film’ for The Lives of Others in 2007.
Now, let’s narrow the field slightly: Who is the tallest actor to win an Oscar? Well, there are a few candidates. Ben Affleck stands a stately six feet and three inches tall and has won two Academy Awards. However, neither of these wins was for his acting. Instead, he won ‘Best Original Screenplay’ for Good Will Hunting and ‘Best Picture’ for directing Argo. So, he’s out.
Clint Eastwood and Liam Neeson – each standing six feet four inches – were nominated for ‘Best Actor’ for Unforgiven and Schindler’s List, respectively. They both lost out on the night, though, so they’re also not the answer we’re looking for.
Instead, the tallest actor to ever win an Oscar is Tim Robbins, who took home ‘Best Supporting Actor’ in 2004 for his harrowing turn in Eastwood’s haunting drama Mystic River. Standing a ceiling-scraping six feet and five inches, Robbins’ record has stood for over 20 years.
In 2020, when the Shawshank Redemption star talked to the equally gargantuan Conan O’Brien on his talk show, the host mentioned how he is still the tallest performer to have ever won an acting Oscar. A bashful Robbins quipped, “That’s why I’m grateful you haven’t played Hamlet,” to which the laughing O’Brien added, “And I think we’re both grateful that Shaquille O’Neal never got an Oscar.” O’Brien then fired some shots at the seven feet and one inch basketball star-turned-thespian by joking, “He had a great role in Kazaam. He was a rapping genie, look it up.”
But who is the tallest Oscar nominee?
While Robbins is the tallest actor ever to win an Academy Award, he’s not the tallest to be nominated for one. You see, in 1996, a skyscraping star who stood six feet and seven inches tall was nominated for ‘Best Supporting Actor.’ He is one of the most acclaimed character actors of the last five decades, having lent his particular brand of quiet intelligence and intimidating gravitas to movies like LA Confidential, The Green Mile, The Queen, and The Artist, as well as prestige TV shows such as Succession, Boardwalk Empire, Six Feet Under, and American Horror Story.
This actor is, of course, James Cromwell, who landed his Oscar nomination for his beloved performance as Farmer Hoggett in the family movie Babe. It was a pretty affirming accolade for a man whose father, John Cromwell – an acclaimed theatre director and actor – once told him, “Well, don’t be an actor. You’re too damn tall.”
This led his son to think, “I guess I’ll have to be a director,” which only resulted in ten years of trying and failing to work as a theatre director. During this period, though, Cromwell kept being hired in small acting roles – and this encouraged him to finally embrace his true calling.
