Tall movie actors have to find their niche.

I may not have money, I may not have good looks, and I may not be talented, but I do have one consolation when it comes to comparing myself to Hollywood’s leading men — at six-foot-six, I tower above most of them.

(On the minus side? Movie theater seating tends to crush my knees.)

There’s an old bit of Hollywood wisdom postulating that the ideal physique for male movie stars is a combination of compact body and big head. “Most movie stars are short,” writes screenwriter and Hollywood sage William Goldman in his book Which Lie Did I Tell? “Most of them are smaller than you think, and all of them are more frightened than you think.”

Ironically, many of the most iconic, larger-than-life actors in Hollywood history are, or were, shorter than or right at five-nine, the average height of the American male. Marlon Brando was five-nine. So was Paul Newman. And they both had an inch on Humphrey Bogart and James Dean. Al Pacino stands just five-seven, which makes him an inch taller than Dustin Hoffman. Richard Dreyfuss, of Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind fame, is a pint-sized five-four — shorter than Michael J. Fox! Some of today’s biggest names also stand shorter than the American average: Mark Wahlberg is five-eight, and Tom Cruise and Sylvester “Rocky Balboa” Stallone are a dinky five-seven.

Still, there are some actors six-three or taller who have managed to carve out a place for themselves in Hollywood. My chances at stardom expired a long time ago, but in hopes of aiding any young Stretch Armstrongs out there, I have analyzed the career paths of these strapping actors and identified five cinematic categories you must choose from if you hope to emulate them.

We can dispense with the first one pretty quickly: Action Gods. This category is reserved for performers so large their size is almost a visual joke: Aquaman and Game of Thrones star Jason Momoa (six-four), Magic Mike scene-stealer Joe Manganiello (six-five), and, of course, human charisma bomb Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who stands an adamantine six-three. If you’re lucky enough to fit into this category, be aware that it’s often smart to find yourself a shrimpy male costar to humanize you, like The Rock did with Kevin Hart or Manganiello did to delightful effect with Pee-wee Herman in Pee-wee’s Big Holiday.

Closely related to this category are Character Actor Freaks. These are guys who use their size for menace rather than heroism. (Think of them as the stepchildren of Richard Kiel, the seven-foot-two living special effect from the James Bond movies Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me.)

Six-foot-three Michael Shannon is my favorite example of this type: He has a way of evoking pathos with his hulking frame and Frankenstein-like visage, whether it’s squirming in a too-small suit in Revolutionary Road or seething with repressed desire in Boardwalk Empire and The Shape of Water. James Cromwell (six-foot-six) was the embodiment of kindliness as Farmer Hoggett in Babe, but he’s even more memorable as Captain Dudley Smith in L.A. Confidential, looming over his underlings, as elongated, soft-spoken, and malevolent as Slender Man.

On the other end of the spectrum you have what I’m calling Goofs and Galoots. These are overgrown kids like Will Ferrell (six-three), Jason Segel (six-four), and Vince Vaughn (six-five) — men with soft bellies and puppy-dog eyes who somehow grew up to be giants without ever maturing emotionally past their early twenties. Ferrell is practically impossible to take seriously as an adult — even if he starts out as an alpha-male character, as in Anchorman or Talladega Nights, he’s always only a couple of setbacks away from chugging milk, running around half-naked, and weeping like a baby. Segel is the most vulnerable of this batch; the shock-comedy sight of his naked penis in Forgetting Sarah Marshall wouldn’t be half as funny (or poignant) if not for the doughy, oversized body attached to it. Let’s put Tim Robbins (six-five) in this category, too, in recognition of his peerless work as the wild-armed pitcher Nuke LaLoosh in Bull Durham and corporate patsy Norville Barnes in The Hudsucker Proxy.

Robbins might also have a place in the fourth classification: Gentle Giants. These are big men with tender hearts, like John Lithgow, or early-career Liam Neeson (both six-four). While it’s true that Lithgow has probably played just as many villains as, say, Michael Shannon (especially in nineties thrillers like Cliffhanger, Ricochet, and Raising Cain), those roles never really affected Lithgow’s cuddly real-life persona. When Neeson reinvented himself as an action star in Taken, part of the thrill was seeing that sweet, sensitive Irish soul with the perpetually haunted expression (just watch him getting pushed around by Judy Davis in Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives) suddenly striding around the world and remorselessly beating up Albanian sex traffickers.

Finally, we arrive at the most exclusive group of all: Lanky Dreamboats. When playing a tall-celebrity round of “Fuck, Marry, Kill,” these are guys who, 99 percent of the time, will land in the “Marry” camp. Here’s where you’ll find six-foot-five Armie Hammer, who stumbled in a series of flops after breaking through playing the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network, but has managed to rebound by unleashing his quirky charm in smart indies like Sorry to Bother You. The instantly meme-able dance moves he displayed in Call Me By Your Name should be studied by big dudes everywhere figuring out how to look good on the dance floor.

Hopefully, Hammer has as long a career as his fellow lady-killer Jeff Goldblum (six-four). Plenty of dorks have hoped to make “neurotic, self-deprecating stammering” into a technique for picking up girls, but nobody has done it as irresistibly as Goldblum. He made mansplaining seem sexy in Jurassic Park, he made typing on a computer seem heroic in Independence Day, and even at the age of 66, he had an undeniable pansexual charm presiding over the gladiator ring in Thor: Ragnarok. Goldblum is also one of the only movie-star tall guys who found an equally tall gal, Geena Davis (a gorgeous six-footer), to share his life on the screen and off. Ah, if only all of us beanpoles could be so lucky!