Celebrity Heights: Which Numbers Are Measured and Which Are Just Claimed
Almost every celebrity height you can look up is a claim rather than a measurement. There is one big exception. In 2019 the NBA told its teams to stop guessing and measure every player barefoot, and dozens of published heights changed within weeks. This page separates figures that come from an actual measurement from figures that come from somebody’s own account of themselves.
What happened when a few hundred famous people were finally measured
Before the 2019-20 season the NBA instructed team physicians to measure every player during training camp, barefoot or in nothing more than socks, and to submit the result to the league. Until then, listed heights had been supplied by the teams and had drifted for decades. The new rosters made the drift visible.
| Player | Listed before | Measured 2019 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Haywood Highsmith | 6 ft 7 in | 6 ft 4 in | -3 in |
| Draymond Green | 6 ft 7 in | 6 ft 5 in | -2 in |
| Klay Thompson | 6 ft 7 in | 6 ft 5 in | -2 in |
| Dwight Howard | 6 ft 11 in | 6 ft 9 in | -2 in |
| Bradley Beal | 6 ft 5 in | 6 ft 3 in | -2 in |
| Derrick Rose | 6 ft 3 in | 6 ft 1 in | -2 in |
| Tobias Harris | 6 ft 9 in | 6 ft 7 in | -2 in |
| Robert Williams | 6 ft 10 in | 6 ft 8 in | -2 in |
| Tacko Fall | 7 ft 7 in | 7 ft 5 in | -2 in |
| Romeo Langford | 6 ft 6 in | 6 ft 4 in | -2 in |
| Carsen Edwards | 6 ft 1 in | 5 ft 11 in | -2 in |
| JJ Barea | 6 ft 0 in | 5 ft 10 in | -2 in |
| Joel Embiid | 7 ft 0 in | 6 ft 11 in | -1 in |
| Anthony Davis | 6 ft 11 in | 6 ft 10 in | -1 in |
| Ben Simmons | 6 ft 10 in | 6 ft 9 in | -1 in |
| Jimmy Butler | 6 ft 8 in | 6 ft 7 in | -1 in |
| Luka Doncic | 6 ft 7 in | 6 ft 6 in | -1 in |
| Zion Williamson | 6 ft 7 in | 6 ft 6 in | -1 in |
| Kyrie Irving | 6 ft 3 in | 6 ft 2 in | -1 in |
| Isaiah Thomas | 5 ft 9 in | 5 ft 8 in | -1 in |
| Kevin Durant | 6 ft 9 in | 6 ft 10 in | +1 in |
| Taj Gibson | 6 ft 9 in | 6 ft 10 in | +1 in |
| Kristaps Porzingis | 7 ft 2 in | 7 ft 3 in | +1 in |
| Boban Marjanovic | 7 ft 3 in | 7 ft 4 in | +1 in |
Why nearly all of them shrank
Shoes, mostly. The NBA draft combine has always recorded two separate figures for every prospect – height with shoes and height without shoes – and the number that made its way onto a team roster was habitually the friendlier of the two. Basketball shoes are worth roughly an inch. Once the measurement had to be taken barefoot, that inch had nowhere to hide.
It does not explain everything. A three-inch correction is not footwear, and neither is the handful of players who went the other way. Kevin Durant, listed at 6 ft 9 in for years, came back an inch taller. So did Kristaps Porzingis and Boban Marjanovic. The lesson is not that famous people always exaggerate upwards – it is that a number nobody checks will wander.
The four kinds of celebrity height figure
Every height you will ever read about a famous person comes from one of these four places, and most pages present all four as though they were the same thing.
| Where the number comes from | What it actually is | How far to trust it |
|---|---|---|
| Measured on the record | A barefoot measurement taken by a physician or at a combine and published | The only category that counts as evidence |
| Official register | A league, club or federation publishes a figure on a squad list | Usually close, but frequently inherited from what the player said |
| Self-reported | The person, their agency or an official bio states it | Unverifiable, and the direction of error is predictable |
| Estimated from photographs | Comparison sites judging people against each other in pictures | Not evidence at all |
Heights that have a documented source
| Name | Height | Where the figure comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Boban Marjanovic | 7 ft 4 in | NBA barefoot measurement, 2019 |
| Tacko Fall | 7 ft 5 in | NBA barefoot measurement, 2019 |
| Joel Embiid | 6 ft 11 in | NBA barefoot measurement, 2019 |
| Kevin Durant | 6 ft 10 in | NBA barefoot measurement, 2019 |
| Anthony Davis | 6 ft 10 in | NBA barefoot measurement, 2019 |
| Luka Doncic | 6 ft 6 in | NBA barefoot measurement, 2019 |
| Zion Williamson | 6 ft 6 in | NBA barefoot measurement, 2019 |
| Draymond Green | 6 ft 5 in | NBA barefoot measurement, 2019 |
| Kyrie Irving | 6 ft 2 in | NBA barefoot measurement, 2019 |
| Isaiah Thomas | 5 ft 8 in | NBA barefoot measurement, 2019 |
| Donald Trump | 6 ft 3 in | White House physician’s report |
| Cristiano Ronaldo | 1.87 m (6 ft 1.5 in) | Official playing register |
| Lionel Messi | 1.70 m (5 ft 7 in) | Official playing register |
The heights this page will not give you
Shaquille O’Neal, Taylor Swift, Dwayne Johnson, Tom Cruise and essentially every actor and musician whose height is heavily searched have never been measured on any public record. What circulates is what they, or somebody working for them, has said.
Shaquille O’Neal is the instructive case. His 7 ft 1 in comes from NBA rosters of an era before barefoot measurement was required – the same rosters that, when checked in 2019, ran about an inch tall across the league. That does not make 7 ft 1 in wrong. It makes it unverified, which is a different thing, and an honest page should say which one it is dealing with.
Professional wrestling is more explicit about it than anyone. WWE publishes billed heights, and the word billed is doing real work: it is a promotional figure, not a measurement. Our profile of Brock Lesnar carries the billed number for that reason, and the same caution applies to the figures quoted for Indian cricketers and for film actors, where no measured record exists at all.
How to read a celebrity height claim
- If a page gives a height without saying where the number came from, assume it is self-reported. That is the default, not the exception.
- If two sites differ by exactly one or two inches, the difference is usually shoes.
- If a page gives a metric figure to the centimetre and an imperial figure to the half-inch, somebody has converted and the precision is manufactured. Cristiano Ronaldo’s 1.87 m is 6 ft 1.6 in, which is exactly why you will see him published as both 6 ft 1 in and 6 ft 2 in.
- Heights that come with a date and a method are worth more than heights that come with a photograph.
What this page does and does not claim
The 2019 figures are a snapshot. They are the heights as submitted when the rule first took effect. Roster listings have been revised since, and a player measured at twenty-two may not measure the same at thirty.
The change table is not the whole league. It reproduces the players named in a published before-and-after list, not all 450 players on NBA rosters that season. Absence from the table does not mean a player’s height was unchanged.
Nothing here is derived from photographs. No figure on this page comes from a comparison site, a red-carpet picture or a side-by-side.
Claims that could not be traced were dropped. Several widely repeated numbers were left out rather than passed on, including a driver’s-licence height for Donald Trump that is quoted constantly but that could not be checked against a document. The 6 ft 3 in given above is the figure recorded in a White House physician’s report, which is a medical measurement rather than a self-report.
Conversions. Metric figures are given as the register publishes them and converted, not the other way round. Where a conversion falls between two inches it is shown to the half-inch rather than rounded silently.
Frequently asked questions
Are celebrity heights accurate?
Usually they are unverified rather than inaccurate. Outside professional sport, almost no famous person has been measured on a public record, so the published figure is whatever they or their representatives have stated.
Why did so many NBA heights change in 2019?
The league began requiring team physicians to measure players barefoot and submit the result. Before that, teams supplied the numbers themselves, and many of those numbers had been taken with shoes on or simply never checked.
Which player lost the most height?
Of the players in the published before-and-after list, Haywood Highsmith dropped the most, from 6 ft 7 in to 6 ft 4 in. Several others lost two inches, including Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, Dwight Howard and Bradley Beal.
How tall is Shaquille O’Neal really?
He is listed at 7 ft 1 in, from NBA rosters compiled before barefoot measurement was required. There is no public barefoot measurement to confirm it.
How tall is Lionel Messi?
1.70 m, which is 5 ft 7 in. It is one of the better-documented heights in sport because it was a matter of medical record during his childhood growth hormone treatment.
Does shoe height count?
Not in any official measurement. Combines and league medicals record barefoot height, and the draft combine records both figures separately so the difference is visible.
Sources
- NBC News, NBA teams will start measuring the height of their players, for real – the 2019 rule and the barefoot requirement (link)
- ClutchPoints, Everyone who lost or gained inches due to height rule change – the before-and-after listings reproduced in the table (link)
- NBA draft combine – the separate with-shoes and without-shoes measurements
- Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi – official playing heights in metric
- NBC News, Trump ‘in very good health’ but slight weight gain puts him in obese category – the 6 ft 3 in recorded in the physician’s report (link)
If you spot an error on this page, email connect@starsfunfacts.com with the name and the correction, and say where your figure comes from. Corrections are made to the article and the update date changes – see the Editorial Policy.
