Chances are that you first encountered William Shatner when he was squaring up to something or someone. He could have been in his Captain Kirk uniform battling a two-meter Gorn in the classic Star Trek episode “Arena” or perhaps sparring with his best friend and partner-in-law James Spader on Boston Legal as the ever-quotable Denny Crane. He could have even been cleaning up the streets of Los Angeles in the early 1980s as the uncompromising Sergeant T. J. Hooker.

In 1987’s Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Shatner directed himself taking on a being that claimed to be God. In the following film, The Undiscovered Country, some would say that he topped that when he fought himself (actually the shapeshifting chameloid Martia, but where’s the fun in that?).

Outside of his acting roles, you may have seen Shatner standing in front of a microphone, interpreting a classic pop song with his distinctive spoken-word delivery. So far, he’s released eight studio albums and has plans for more.

As an actor, author, screenwriter, producer, director, and singer, few can rival him in confronting such a wide range of opponents. But just how tall is the man who’s taken them all on?

How tall is William Shatner?

The 90-year old Canadian is set to be the oldest person to travel into space in October 2021. He’ll follow Jeff Bezos to a suborbital height of 66 miles above Earth as a guest of Blue Origin aboard the New Shepard NS-18. The veteran actor has already joked that he hopes he won’t be joined by a gremlin on his trip, a reference to the 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone he starred in called “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.”

Instead, Shatner will be joined by Blue Origin’s vice president of Mission and Flight Operations, a former NASA engineer, and the co-founder of a clinical research software company.

As for the suit size Captain Kirk will be wearing, the consensus is that William Shatner’s peak height was 5’ 9”, although he now comes in at 5’ 7½” tall.

Shatner’s height has been the subject of some debate for over half a century. Star Trek producer Bob Justman once suggested that the actor wore lifts aboard the Enterprise to achieve his advertised height of 5’ 11”. 

When Shatner met Mike Tyson, he is said to have asked the former world heavyweight champion his height. When Tyson told him he was 5’ 10”, Shatner replied that that was his height, too.

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