Hollywood movie stars often appear larger than life. And while some may not be quite as big in real life as they may appear on the screen, at six foot two inches tall, Will Smith is not a small guy. Or at least, he’s not usually a small guy. I mean, when you occasionally hang around Shaquille O’Neal, everybody is going to feel short.
Will Smith recently shared a Throwback Thursday image to Instagram from the 2004 MTV Video Music Awards. It shows Smith and Shaq side by side, and if you didn’t know that Shaq was seven feet tall, you’d certainly think Smith was a lot shorter than he appears in movies. Alongside the pic the Oscar winner said…
Throwback to the exact moment when I realized 6’2 aint that tall. Yo shaq - save a little height for the rest of us, man!!
Hollywood actors come in all shapes and sizes of course, but various strategies are often employed to make movie stars look taller than they are, just ask Kevin Hart, because making your lead characters look tall usually just looks better on film. But Will Smith probably isn’t a guy who has had to do much of that, because 6’2 is actually fairly tall. He’s certainly a lot taller than Tom Cruise or Michael J. Fox.
But then Shaq is just a huge guy. He's taller than most professional wrestlers, which may be why Shaq and wrestling have always held close ties. Even among NBA players, where being tall is basically required, Shaq is abnormally tall. Not only that, he isn't just tall, he's big, though Shaq has been working on losing weight recently. It’s part of what made him such a powerful force in basketball and part of what has made Shaq a major pop culture force, not simply a sports star. At a certain point you just sort of have to be a better-than-average basketball player when you’re always the tallest guy on the court.
As somebody who is significantly shorter than Will Smith, and Tom Cruise for that matter, I’m used to everybody else being taller, but I guess I can see how it would be wild to be used to being pretty tall, and then hanging out with Shaq and realizing that he doesn’t think you’re all that tall. I can't even imagine what it would be like for somebody nearly two feet shorter than Shaq to stand next to him. At 7’1 Shaq is almost a full foot taller than Smith and in the picture, it shows.
Smith may not be standing perfectly tall in this picture, which likely makes the height difference even greater, but even if he was at full attention it would be clear just how tall Shaq is. Maybe Will Smith should just make a point to hang out with shorter people if he doesn't like feeling so small. I'm free.
