Photo by PR Photos I rose on the legs of a Heron and by the time I was 17 years old I was six foot four inches tall. Whatever fortune tellers and people who give instruction in waltzing may say, there are quite a number of disadvantages to being tall, especially in Britain. I'm six-foot-four...The first 10 years of my career between 1947 and 1957, I was always being told here in Britain, not in the States - that's why I rather wish I'd been born an American and had become an American actor because my size, either too tall or too short, would've been immaterial - I was told over here I was much too tall for the average British leading man, therefore out of the question that I would be in any kind of film with any of these people because people's eyes inevitably gravitate to something that's either taller or shorter or fatter or thinner or whatever. And so rather than being discouraged by this, which I thought was nonsense anyway - and indeed, in a sense, it is - I was all the more determined that during those 10 years before I got my first break, I would learn everything I possibly could about my craft. Q: Was your height a problem in your early career?LEE: Oh yes, it was.
Q: I imagine that was because no one cared to have someone in the picture who towered above the leading man.
LEE: That is exactly right.
Q: I have heard all sorts of estimates of your height, anywhere up to six-foot-six.
LEE: No. I am six-foot-four.
-- Famous Monsters of Filmland Being six-foot-four was a terrible disadvantage to me. I was the tallest actor in the country. I am also not entirely British in appearance. ... I didn't represent in the eyes of the distributors or the eyes of the audience a typical Englishman — so they told me.
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