Tiny Dancers

Oi! Leave us midgelings alone! There's not much advantage to being vertically challenged, so if it means we get the pick of the acting parts that's just fine by me.

(Interesting observation however. What snacks were they buying?  Dessicated lettuce?)

I seem to remember reading years ago that full-on trained dancers won't develop physically as fully as people who have not trained as dancers. I imagine being fairly small has a serious advantage when it comes to being thrown around by other dancers. I expect dancing constantly helps keep one's physique fairly slender. And when cast change comes around, you do want to try getting people who will already fit the costumes (particularly for smaller roles), so if you've established a precedent for smaller performers, that's just going to self-perpetuate.

Also casting directors can get a bit weird - if they're casting a mother and a teenager, they often seem to cast the teenager shorter even though I started towering over my mother at the age of 13. If you're an unusual height, casting directors just may find it harder to place you so you're not going to be as employed as much as people who fit the casting directors' ideas of "standard".

I wonder as well if there's something a lot deeper. Maybe a tall child will find themselves outstripping their classmates at sport due to their size advantage (for instance), while a small child will find people actually pay attention to them if they're standing on a stage and shouting. A tall person only needs to walk down a supermarket aisle to find validation ("why of course I'll get that bottle off the top shelf for you, madam") whereas for a shorter person only the roar of the crowd will do. Massively over-simplified but I do wonder if there are any studies into it.

It's also the case that if you're not the 'traditional' dancer shape you won't be 'encouraged' as much in the early years, because dance training has fairly set in stone views on what a dancer looks like. For good reason in some respects- it takes a certain body type to do certain disciplines to the highest standards. So I think the 'dancer dancers' of shows are of that shape/size simply because there are certain body types that lend themselves to particular skills (in the same way rugby players are a different size and shape to footballers for example)

In roles that are more 'actor who also dances' I think we see a bit more body type variety and there's a few tall girl actresses out there.

As an aside there's a chorus member in Evita on tour who is VERY tall, so tall in fact his trousers all look like they've been cropped.

I think part of it may be related to area and volume. The strength of a muscle depends on its cross-sectional area while the mass it's trying to move depends on the volume of the body part it's attached to, and volume reduces faster than area as you scale something down. Smaller people have an advantage when it comes to rapid changes in movement. It's not a huge advantage because humans don't vary wildly in size, but it's there.

I couldn't resist the thread title but I'm interested in acting in general, not just dancers. Performers in general actually. Madame Tussaud's is always an eye opener. Tiny!

Related/unrelated I did find the removal of Polonius in Andrew Scott's Hamlet both worrying and amusing given their relative sizes...

A non- theatre one but as a fan of Supernatural and Gilmore Girls the giant that is Jared Padelecki is always amusing/deceiving in the height front- he makes his on screen brother Jensen Ackles look tiny, when in fact he's a none too short 6ft!

And yes, why lie on a CV? unless you're going for radio jobs someone is going to notice fairly quickly...

Also guys on dating sites have an unhealthy obsession with telling you how tall they are because apparently women ask? I remember in school as well girls saying they couldn't possibly date a shorter man...why? what difference does it make? surely not being a dick and generally getting on is more important than being under 6ft? People confuse me...

I swear it's a perceived dominance thing. Lots of men seem to be insecure about a woman being taller than them, and to believe that women don't like short men.
Height is taken as a measure of masculinity, so short men are seen an unmasculine and tall women as unfeminine.

It's bloody ridiculous, but on average men are taller than women so I guess it's one of those things that's ingrained in a lot of people's psyches.

As for tall actors, I give you the curious case of Tom Hiddleston - who is 6'2" or thereabouts but for some reason people tend to think of as shorter. I think it's at least partly because he's spent a lot of time standing next to 6'4" of Chris Hemsworth, but the same people tend to think he's not very masculine, and I swear the perceptions are connected. Journalists regularly express surprise that he is so tall when they meet him.

Of course most of the Marvel actors are tall - Chris Evans in over 6 foot and so is Chris Pratt - apart from Robert Downey Jr, who reportedly wears lifts in his shoes so he doesn't look (so much) like a midget next to them. You wouldn't think that an inch or two would make much of a difference, but it does seem to.

Gwen Christie was actively told that she was too tall to be a successful actress at drama school.

Being short hasn't affected Tom Cruise's career but I wouldn't be surprised if like Robert Downey Jr, he wears flats so he doesn't look short

Madonna. 

Tiny.