So you want to be a Hollywood leading man? Besides the obviously being good looking and charming on-screen persona, what other traits might many leading men share?
Well a lot of leading men are short and have large heads. Literally, and sometimes figuratively.
Yes it is true. The average height for all men in the U.S is 176.3 cm or 5 feet 9 4/10 inches. And the average hat size for men in U.S. is a size 7, which corresponds to a circumference of 22 inches. (Yes, the garment and hat industries care about this sort of thing and keep track of it.) I think you will find that it is common for leading men to be below average height and above the average in hat size.
The may be a sound reason behind this. Some Hollywood cameraman think that shorter people photograph better than long and lanky subjects. But having a large head, the most important part to photograph, really fills up the frame and commands attention. The combination makes a person more photogenic and have greater impact. Being a movie star is all about being photogenic.
Furthermore it seems to me that the shorter the leading man, the larger his gob. Who knows, maybe there is a relationship between height and hat size. Kind of like a Pythagoran Theorem: The sum of hat size squared plus height squared equals something squared.
Here are some famous Hollywood leading men from the past and present, along with their heights and hat sizes. Notice that they are all short of stature.
Fred Astaire 5′9″ 7 1/8
Humphrey Bogart 5′ 8″
James Cagney 5′ 5″
Edward G. Robinson 5′ 5″ 7 1/4
Frank Sinatra 5′7 1/2″ 7 1/4
Jack Black 5′ 6″
Tom Cruise 5′ 7″
Danny DeVito 5′ 0″
Emilio Estevez 5′ 4″
Michael J. Fox 5′ 5″
Dustin Hoffman 5′ 5 1/2″
Al Pacino 5′ 7″
OK, a lot of the leading men don’t have their hat size listed. But they sure look like they have big craniums. Am I on to something, or just on something? I am not a statistician so I can’t prove anything. All the evidence is just anecdotal at this point.
Go ahead and investigate for yourself. Look up the height of your favorite leading man at the website Celebrity Heights. Then cross reference it at Baron Hat’s Celebrity Hat sizes.
