Lu-Tze possibly? The subject of Rule One: “Do not act incautiously when confronting a little bald wrinkly smiling man”.
Kyla writes:
> Buffy’s pretty short. IMDB says SMG is 5’4".
The average height for adult American females is 5’4".
The Amazing Hanna writes:
> Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in WWII and later a movie actor, was
> probably the closest thing to a real-life action hero there’s ever been. He was
> tiny - five foot five.
The average height for adult American males at present is 5’9.5", so that’s not tiny. Furthermore, the average height was slightly less during Murphy’s lifetime.
How about Chiun from Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins?
Joel Grey is 5’5".
Cordwainer Bird, alter-ego (and frequent pseudonym) of Harlan Ellison and the protagonist of his Weird Heroes Vol. 2 short story, “The New York Review of Bird.” An exaggerated version of Ellison’s own public persona, Bird was exactly 4 feet tall, a master of Jeet Kune Do, and a literary vigilante (He would shove incompetent editors out of high windows, beat up bookstore employees for putting his book of essays in the “sci-fi” section, that sort of thing). Drawn by Neal Adams.
Another obscure Marvel character (and another Neal Adams character) is Shadow-Stalker, a Japanese-American who was too short to be considered for Special Forces and went on to become some kind of ninja instead. This was a one-shot character for the b&w magazine Bizarre Adventures, IIRC. The story was totally overshadowed by an “Elektra” story by Frank Miller in the same issue.
Rorschach, in WATCHMEN, is 5’6"; he wears a hat and has lifts in his shoes when fighting crime in costume, but also wins a number of brawls against noticeably bigger opponents while in civilian garb; he’s said to have possessed “impressive skill in the areas of gymnastics and amateur boxing” even before starting his superhero career, and generously helps along his athletic prowess with a brutal knack for using improvised weapons. In the movie, he’s played by Jackie Earle Haley – who’s the same height, maybe even a trifle shorter, and looks it on-screen.
Sylvester Stallone is often made to look taller than he actually is:
‘Expendables’ director Sylvester Stallone made ‘taller’ for movie’s poster
:: shrug ::
The OP specifically says that the thread is about the apparent height of the character on screen, not the actual height of the actor.
Danger Mouse! Although I don’t know if he was unusually short compared to other mice.
Under Dog.
Not only was he short, but he had to take pills to become a Super Hero (what a roll model he was to me as a kid!)
Better living through chemistry!
Tyrion Lannister from Song of Ice and Fire performs several heroic deeds, and is arguably one of the primary protagonists.
Gimli - You said Hobbits. Didn’t mention Dwarfs (Dwarves?).
Mighty Mouse -
Ben Stiller is only 5’6". So that means that Tugg Speedman, Starksky (of Starsky & Hutch) and Mr Furious are probably also short action heroes.
The reason I ruled out hobbits (and implicitly dwarves) is that I am looking for (a) human characters (and yes, I know that Hobbits are technically Men) and (b) characters who would perceive themselves as being short by the standards of their community. As I mentioned upthread, Pippin & Merry probably don’t perceive themselves as being short; they think Legolas & Boromir are giants. (Just as Harry Potter thinks that Hagrid is a giant.)
5’6" is short, but not unusually so. And again I meant the characte. I don’t recall whether, in the roles you cite, he is shot so as to seem taller, as Tom Cruise usually is. (I recall seeing him walking beside Ving Rhames in one of the Mission Impossible movies; the camera made it seem that they were the same height, which clearly they are not.
Scott Carey - The Incredible Shrinking Man
Pat Kramer - The Incredible Shrinking Woman
Tom Thumb
Napoleon Bonaparte
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (I hear he was getting a lot of action at the Moulin Rouge)
Napoleon was actually around 5’6":
JP had been gayer than a San Francisco Pride Parade since the beginning; it wasn’t something they harped on à la “Wolverine has adamantium-laced bones” since it would have sent the CCA into hydrophobic fits, but there had been enough clue-by-fours to build a whole three-story house.
Any character played by Van Damme. In UniSol they specifically make a point of showing off the difference between him and Lundgren, but in general there aren’t attempts at making him look tall (or less-short).
Stallone on the other hand isn’t any kind of tall, but except for the Rocky movie where he’s up against (again) Lundgren, I think they tend to “gloss it over” - not exactly make him look taller, but make him look less short.
Well, there’s also the Rocky movie where he’s up against Hulk Hogan.
Yoda
Which is taller than the fictional character in the Destroyer series who is only 5’ tall (and someone you’d definitely want to be polite to).
Does Wall.E count? Also, how about Nemo? (from Finding Nemo)
Alexander the Great in Mary Renault’s Fire From Heaven is an action guy-- less so in the remainder of the trilogy, not least because he’s dead in the third book. He was described as shorter than other boys, but I don’t recall if he was supposed to be unusually short. It looks like the consensus on his real life height is that he was of average height or slightly less.
The Hero, played by Billy Curtis, from The Terror of Tiny Town probably won’t count because everyone in the cast was short.
Mighty Mouse clobbered taller foes. Non-human, though.
Pixie from the Eternals was short. To a lesser extent so are Kitty Pryde and Jubilee, as in shorter than Wolverine if I recall correctly.
Seems like Speed Racer was kinda short, but not freakishly so.
Stealing from TVTropes:
The hero from Yu Gi Oh is short. [A stretch, he does his action by proxy, I believe]
“Charles Manson is 5’2”." [No, he’s not an action hero, I just didn’t know that.]
“Bank robber George “Baby Face” Nelson was a raving loony, with a whole keyboard full of Berserk Buttons, but the biggest one was his height: he was only 5’4”."
“Attila the Hun may have suffered from dwarfism.” [Probably the best one I found and it’s a solid maybe, probably a tale made up by his literate enemies.]
/tvtropes
The tropes I found were Mister Big and The Napoleon.