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When you look down from the height of fame, how far do you see? Not too far maybe, when you are a top Bollywood hero.

Many of our them, ahem, are not exactly tall. All the three Khans, Ranveer Singh, Shahid Kapoor…the list can go on. The top ladies, on the other hand, tower. Deepika Padukone, Anushka Sharma, Sonam Kapoor, Disha Patani and Kriti Sanon are all in the 5.8 feet or more club, with Kriti standing the tallest.

Though the heroes don’t hand out CVs declaring their heights, unlike, say, Kriti, who in a YouTube video, is seeing claiming she is 5.9, and there is not much data in the public domain that prove a hero’s height conclusively — online SRK’s length varies between 5.5 to 5.8 feet — it is quite clear that many of our leading ladies are also leading from the front, upwards, leaving the hero below.  

Yet. Yet. Yet. When is the last time you have seen a heroine shoot up, past the hero on screen? However tall she is in real life, she is less than her man on screen. Preferably in money, status and age too, but certainly in height.
Till date, heroes try every filmi trick to look taller, and the women stoop to conquer.

True, we have seen Salman Khan and Susmita Sen together in Biwi No. 1. There Susmita always managed to look a few inches taller, despite her flat shoes and flattened hairstyle. Journalist Chaitanya Padukone, in fact, recalls Salman Khan telling him on the sets of Biwi No. 1 that he did not care much about his height as he had a macho physique.
“So what if the heroine is taller? I don’t need to stand on a stool to match her height,” Chaitanya Padukone recalls Salman telling.

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But in his earlier films, Salman, with Aamir, was known to wear heeled shoes. Short actors like him are known to favour “elevator shoes”, with more than 2-to-2.5-inch heels outside, and of a similar height inside.

When posing in photographs with taller people, including heroines, the short hero apparently moves forward and stands closer to the camera to look taller. See the posters of Biwi No. 1. There Susmita is diminutive, compared to Salman.
Sometimes it’s furniture. Ratan Jain, producer of films like Dhadkan and Baazigar, says that till this day the hero has to be taller. “We had to keep a wooden plank or a paatla to increase the hero’s height or special shoes used to be made for the hero.’’

At times there is a forced perspective, where the heroine is made to stand far away from the hero and shot in such a way that they look the same height. Check out Deepika and SRK in Om Shanti Om.

Previously, taller heroines were even more problematic, especially Zeenat Aman. “I remember attending the shooting of (Shakti Samanta’s) Ajanabee featuring Rajesh Khanna and Zeenat Aman, who was taller than Khanna. During close-up shots he would stand on a small cushion to match her height,” says Chaitanya Padukone. “During close-ups the director would make the heroine rest her head on the hero’s shoulder. Many wore insoles to increase their height,’’ he added.
But now that there are many tall heroines, cinematographer Nitin Rao feels they fare better than before. “The social mindset has changed. However some leading men may still wear heeled shoes, not necessarily because the director ordered it.”

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Some insist that things have changed radically. Kriti Sanon is one of the tallest heroines in the business now, but that did not strike Ashwiny Iyer Tewari when she cast Kriti in Bareilly Ki Barfi, opposite Rajkummar Rao. “I had to think about the height when she comes to wish (him) happy birthday and (he) kisses her and I thought I should have kept a paatla to increase his height,” Tewari said.

Varun Dhawan, who is shorter than Katrina Kaif, has been cast opposite her in Remo D’Souza’s film, without any regret.
Casting director turned director Mukesh Chhabra said discussing the height of the heroine for a film is passé now. Even Rajkummar Rao, who will act in his next film with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and in another one with Nargis Fakhri titled 5 Weddings, said it does not really matter any more. 

A film titled Main Meri Patni Aur Woh, featuring Rituparna Sengupta and Rajpal Yadav, was about an insecure man who was shorter than his wife.

In real life, the issue remains less resolved.

“A tall woman and a short man as a couple have a lot of psychological complexities. Many of them do not walk together. Unless one accepts one’s own body respectfully and the other’s too, things will be tough,” says psychiatrist Harish Shetty.

Chandrima S. Bhattacharya and Bharati K. Dubey