Looking at some lists of ex-football players turned (real) actors doesn’t turn up many not mentioned that are at least 6’4".
Bubba Smith: 6’7", 265. 6 Police Academy movies and much more.
Merlin Olsen: 6’5", 270 pounds. Very large and imposing looking but generally played gentler folk, e.g., Little House on the Prairie/Father Murphy.
Ditto Rosey Grier: 6’5", 284. Maybe a little scarier in The Thing with Two Heads.
One of my favorites- Ben Davidson: 6’8", 275 didn’t have too much of an acting career. But he did appear in MASH*, Conan the Barbarian and Behind the Green Door (!).
Ken Howard was 6’6" and though not overly muscular was quite athletic and in good shape as a young actor. He was the captain of the Amherst College basketball team and reportedly had offers to better basketball schools but wanted to concentrate on academics.
Coming in at the bottom end of ‘extremely tall’ there is Kevin Sorbo at 6 foot 3 and a half and about 235lb. Best known for Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Andromeda he has also appeared in plenty of B Movies, TV movies and straight to DVD including the appropriately named Walking Tall.
His size would have made him weak, unless he had a heck of a lot of muscle to back it up. Was he carrying more fat than was healthy? Maybe, but that’s not all he was carrying.
Dave Bautista (billed in MMA as 6’6", 290 lbs) played Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy. He’s already got about a dozen other small-role credits in the can and has six movies in production or post-production at present.
Very much stretching the definition of actor – though he’s got a SAG card and a half-dozen credits – is Dalip Singh Rana (WWE’s the Great Khali). Billed at 7’1" and ~350 lbs, he’s the closest thing physically to Andre the Giant out there working now.
Christopher Lee was 6’5". When he first tried to get into acting he was told he was “much too tall to be an actor”. I’m assuming he was fit, as he had been in the British armed forces.
Speaking of 6’4" guys who got ripped to play a superhero this year, Alexander Skarsgård was of course showing his 8-pack abs whenever possible as Tarzan.
Don’t forget Shaquille O’Neal. He was in Steel and Kazaam, is 7’1", and weighs about 325 pounds. It must take a lot to move like he does!
I still enjoy seeing him on TV whenever he shows up, even if it’s just commercials for some pain relievers. You know the man must have a lot of personal charisma despite how much they make fun of him on SNL.
Andre had a lot of back problems that were complicated by what he endured in the professional wrestling circuit, and was frequently in a great deal of pain. If you read As You Wish, where Cary Elwes goes through the making of The Princess Bride, he notes just how prodigious Andre’s appetite not only for food was, but for alcohol. Having enough beer and wine to ease the pain in his back was daily reprieve for him.
I was thinking of Robert Maillet, Canadian actor and former professional wrestler. He played the titanic Russian jaeger pilot Sasha Kaidanovsky in Pacific Rim. He’s 7’1’ and billed at 350 lbs.
I came to mention Idris Elba, thinking he was very tall. But a check shows he’s 6’3". That’s not short, but the man has such a presence that he seems towering. And yes, he’s muscular.
