
Actors were once strapping hunks, thick-thighed he-men who had only to arrive at a film premiere to make everyone’s eyes bulge.

These Adonises towered above lesser mortals and had their suits made specially for them because they were such muscular specimens.

That’s the way things were when the likes of John Wayne (6ft 4in), Gregory Peck (6ft 3in), Charlton Heston (6ft 3in) and Clint Eastwood (6ft 4in) were in their prime.

They were big men playing big characters, often on top of enormous horses or engaged in butch boxing bouts.

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Compare that with the recent Oscars ceremony, when our own Eddie Redmayne was announced as winner of the Best Actor category for his performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory Of Everything. The audience members sitting near him leapt to their feet to applaud — and little Eddie was suddenly dwarfed.

The actress Cate Blanchett loomed over him — she looked so much bigger than him, he could have been her lunch. And yet Redmayne, at 5ft 10in, is one of the taller modern male stars.

Norma Desmond, the fading movie star in Sunset Boulevard, has a celebrated line as she looks back on her career. ‘I am big,’ she reassures herself. ‘It’s the pictures that got small.’

Poor Norma. Well, now it’s the male actors who are small. Today it is no disadvantage to an actor to be a short ’un. Indeed, it often seems to suit the cameras.

With Westerns having faded from favour, the chaps no longer need to be tall enough to sling a leg over a mighty stallion — or, indeed, over Jane Russell on some beach or other.

Generally, films these days are less likely to contain the sort of bar brawls, tough-guy scraps and derring-do scenes requiring brawn. The modern leading man is more likely to be required to burst into tears and go shopping.

Veteran Dustin Hoffman is 5ft 5in. When he played youthful Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate, it suited that character’s semi-formed persona.

But since then he has played numerous roles, from Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein in All The President’s Men to U.S. Army doctor Sam Daniels in Outbreak, his characters often being nerdy worriers full of intellectual energy.

In such parts, it matters not how tall you are. What matters is the intensity — and perhaps that may be helped by a compact physicality.

In contrast, there is a widespread idea these days that towering height, a thick neck and a weightlifter’s jawline equal dimness, roughness and a lack of emotional awareness.

This may be terribly unfair. I am sure there are plenty of daisy chain-chewing amateur poets in bodybuilding circles, but casting directors tend not to defy audiences’ received wisdom.

Shortie Hoffman is credited by some critics with re-moulding filmgoers’ ideas as to what a ‘real man’ looked like. No longer did he have to be a beefcake like Gary Cooper (6ft 3in) or a swaggering, all-American, bar-fighting tough like Wayne, with a rolling gait and patriotic politics to match.

Today's stars such as Eddie Redmayne, left, at 5 foot 10 and Martin Freeman, right, at five foot six, are smaller than giants of the silver screen

Christopher Lee was even taller at 6ft 5in, James Bond star Sean Connery was 6ft 2in (both may have shrunk a little) and poor Christopher Reeve, who played Superman before his tragic horse-riding accident, was 6ft 4in.

Compare those man mountains with the likes of today’s Bond, Daniel Craig (5ft 10in) or Martin Freeman (hobbit Bilbo Baggins) who is 5ft 6in and recently played a pocket-sized Richard III on the London stage.

I happened to see Freeman in civvies recently and what struck me was how normal he looked: therein lies his appeal, perhaps. He is the man in the street.

Acting styles have changed. Directors are no longer looking for exceptional bruisers and traditional matinee idols. Our artistic tastes have become more naturalistic, at least where men are concerned.

Arnold Schwarzenegger once claimed to be 6 foot 2 but there are now reports he is just 5 foot 11. Even Lewis Hamilton remarked he thought Arnie would be taller when he presented him with last Sunday's Australian Grand Prix trophy

Brad Pitt is just 5ft 10in, but that has not stopped him being regarded as perhaps the number one movie pin-up of the past 15 years. Then there is Daniel ‘Harry Potter’ Radcliffe at 5ft 5in, and Tom Cruise at 5ft 7in.

Filming the next Mission Impossible at a London location recently, tiny Tom had to stand on a platform to bring him up to a height where the camera might catch more of him than just the top of his head.

Shades of former French president Sarkozy, who wore Cuban heels.

Even muscle men in Hollywood’s modern era have been on the short side. Sylvester Stallone, aka Rocky the boxer, is just 5ft 9in — which is probably about the circumference of his bicep, too.

And Arnold Schwarzenegger? He used to claim to be 6ft 2in, then it dropped to 6ft 1in, then there were reports he was 5ft 11in. Indeed, when Arnie presented Lewis Hamilton with the winner’s trophy at last Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix, the driver joked: ‘Wow . . . I thought you were taller!’

Tom Cruise at 5 foot 7, left, had to stand on a platform to bring up to camera height, while Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe stands at just 5 foot 5

I remember when Schwarzenegger came to Downing Street in his role as governor of California. He could barely see over the lectern!

The hunks of old Hollywood were gorgeously suited, big as nightclub bouncers and radiated reliability. But today such men have given way to fluttering, scrawny types in torn denims, who perhaps — like Eddie Redmayne — model Burberry macintoshes in their spare time.

Yet this should not come as any surprise, for it matches the changes in society (in the West, at least — they have yet to buy this attitude shift in Muslim countries).

Since the rise of Establishment feminism in the Seventies, men have been allowed, and, indeed, pressured, to become more touchy-feely, feminised, tame.

Welcome to the realities of the gender power struggle, as played out over the past 40 years or so.

It would be absurd to suggest that a tall artiste cannot be sensitive and metrosexual, but the dramatic stereotype today equates fine bone structures and physical petiteness with emotional delicacy.

And it is that inner daintiness that film directors, rightly or wrongly, reckon audiences want these days.