Here’s a fun one: Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds star Anson Mount are in a Twitter feud over male actors lying about their height on their resumes.
It got started when Gunn sounded off about his frustrations over actors lying about their heights, since it can create difficulties in the casting process:
Gunn, who admits to surrounding himself “with mammoths,” got a fair amount of pushback for this thread, with some assuming the reason guys lie on their resumes in the first place is because people like Gunn won’t hire them if they’re not of a certain height. But Gunn was in the thick of it and had answers for many of them:
Absolute nonsense. Men lying about their height in resumes costs them as many jobs as it gets them through deceit. You’re often looking for someone smaller to balance out the cast, to make a star look taller, or to fit well with another comparable actor. https://t.co/DTnLrCzmIB
— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) June 13, 2021
But the most notable pushback came from Anson Mount, who plays Captain Pike in Star Trek: Discovery and will soon headline the new show Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. He seems to take the view that the problem is with actors focusing on height rather than actors lying about it:
“Present US with your measurements when we walk through the door. We’ll likely be underwhelmed.” Yeesh.
Gunn had an answer for this, too:
For the record, Gunn is 6’0” and Mount is 6’1″, at least according to Google, but after this who can you believe?
James Gunn vs Anson Mount
So what do you think? Honestly, even though I get when Gunn is saying about using the heights of actors to help tell a story, I’m betting that does disqualify shorter guys a lot of the time, so maybe directors should look for other ways to tell that story.
And there are enough big-name male action stars to prove that someone doesn’t need to be tall to sell a movie. Tom Cruise is famously on the short side at 5’8″. Ditto Tom Holland. James McAvoy is 5’7″ and Daniel Radcliffe is 5’5″. Al Pacino, Martin Sheen, Dustin Hoffman and Kevin Hart are all 5’7″ or shorter, but you probably don’t think of them as “short.” But they’re the exceptions, not the rule.
That said, Mount came on pretty strong. He walked things back a bit later:
What do you think? Does Mount have a point or should Gunn be given the benefit of the doubt given his experience? Or maybe he’s too entrenched to see things from another perspective?
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