Andre The Giant's Tragic Real-Life Story

During the 1980s, World Wrestling Entertainment was a grab-tastic slam-stravaganza crammed with classic characters and stellar storylines. Adults and kids alike tuned in to see toon-like humans make mat magic happen. Barbers became barbarous beefcakes, macho savages savagely hit men, and hit men excellently executed submission holds. The wrestling world revolved around a maniacal hulk, but Andre the Giant was the Atlas holding it up.

Tall and titanic, the 500-plus-pound Andre dwarfed enormous athletes like an iceberg. One of his gargantuan hands could engulf a 12-ounce beer can, and his wrists were thicker than most men's ankles. Andre the Giant dominated wrestling for decades and made a big splash on the big screen. The legendary performer boasted a massive body of work and masses of grateful fans, but thanks to a disorder called acromegaly, he perpetually gained body mass and battled debilitating health problems. Meanwhile, the strain of fame maimed him mentally. People like to say "No pain, no gain," but Andre painfully proved that saying true.

By every mentionable measure, Andre the Giant was a whole lot of man. Besides size, he possessed unfathomable strength and a voice that sounded deeper than the ocean. He had a rugged upbringing on a farm in the French Alps. Born Andre Roussimoff in 1946, the little giant made a big impression on his parents. According to Sports Illustrated, when Andre was born, his father remarked, "Such hands. Perhaps he will be a man to match my father."

Giants apparently ran in Andre's family. The LA Times explained that while his parents and siblings were "normal sized," his paternal grandfather supposedly stood at an alpine 7-foot-8. The WWE listed Andre's height as 7-foot-4, though he was likely closer to 6-foot-11. Though not the tallest leviathan, he was arguably the mightiest. Andre never lifted weights, yet acquaintances alleged he could lift trees and overpower thousand-pound cows. At 12 years old, he did manual labor meant for men. When he got older, he would pull his friend's cars around for fun, occasionally wedging them between buildings and lampposts.

Andre's daunting dimensions and exceptional strength didn't tell the whole story. Friends knew him as an affable, patient person. As a young man, he was an agile athlete. Many wrestlers only saw his size, however, and feared Andre would injure them. Sadly, it was actually Andre's size that would eventually bring him down.

Andre the Giant left home at age 14 and delved into wrestling at 16. During the 1970s, he was the most renowned wrestler on Earth, according to the LA Times. He captivated Japan as "Monster Roussimoff." Canadians called him "Jean Ferre." In 1973, the father of WWE owner Vince McMahon repackaged him as Andre the Giant. He flew to Tunisia, England, and most of Europe in jets that could scarcely accommodate him.

Sports Illustrated's Terry Todd likened him to Gulliver living in Lilliput. The tiniest tasks were enormously difficult. Todd traveled with Andre and observed, "Going through a revolving door, he must bend and take tiny shuffling steps to make the door revolve. He is unable even to consider learning to play the piano because he would strike three white keys with one finger." He bent himself like a contortionist to sort-of-fit in taxis. He couldn't really bathe in hotel bathrooms. Andre wasn't just larger than life; he was larger than daily life.

Rejection, and being made to feel like he was monstrously different, is a sadly recurring theme in the life of Andre the Giant. His size even prevented him from fulfilling the rite of passage of national service. While it wasn't at war at the time, France operated a draft in the 1960s, and about three-quarters of all men over the age of 18 selected would join the military for a year. In 1965, Andre's name was picked and he reported to a military facility for duty.

An army surgeon responsible for the required entry physical quickly declared Andre to be unfit to serve. There wasn't anything overtly medically wrong with the young man, but the army believed he'd be a liability. They wouldn't have boots, cots, or gear that would fit the very large individual, and he'd also be far too tall to fight in trenches, sticking straight out and providing the enemy with a target.

Aspects of Andre the Giant's life sound charming. The problem was other people. Everyone everywhere stared at him all the time. Strangers incessantly asked about his size. Understandably, the giant longed to walk in a smaller man's shoes. (Andre wore a size 26.) He said in one interview, "I would give much money to be able to spend one day per week as a man of regular size." 

Not everyone gravitated to Andre. "Often, when I go to the homes of people who have small children, the children will run from me even though they have seen me on television," he explained. "I understand why they do this, but it is a sad feeling for me, even so." Acromegaly, the cause of his gigantism, gave him an unusual face. His anterior pituitary gland overproduced growth hormone, distorting Andre's face in ways that weren't typical.

Adults were intentionally hurtful. WWE Hall of Famer Bret Hart told Bleacher Report that he witnessed grannies "curse [Andre] out" for declining to sign autographs. In an HBO documentary simply titled "Andre the Giant," announcer "Mean" Gene Okerlund said the giant "would cry" because of all the teasing he endured (via The Post and Courier). Andre eventually found refuge in the QVC channel. Per CBS Sports, it allowed him to shop without "attracting unwanted audiences."

Andre was an island in a sea of spectators, and according to coworkers, his liver swam in an ocean of booze. USA Today compiled several extraordinary stories about Andre's drinking. Ex-wrestler Gerald Brisco, for instance, claimed the giant downed six bottles of wine before matches. Hulk Hogan remembered watching Andre inhale "108 12-ounce cans of beer" in 45 minutes. Other buddies in the wrestling business said he finished "156 beers at one sitting." Modern Drunkard Magazine reported he racked up a $40,000 hotel bar tab while working on the set of "The Princess Bride." In an interview with David Letterman, Andre openly admitted to drinking "two or three bottles" of wine with meals and 117 beers in a single night. 

Obviously, he loved to chug, but the giant was also drowning sorrow. As CBS Sports explained, "Andre was living in pain." Years of wrestling and arduous travel ravaged his anatomy. Acromegaly continually caused his bones, joints, and body to thicken, inflicting further physical stress. In Andre's day, wrestlers said their promos and took their painkillers, but having seen how pills affected other performers, he refused to go that route.

Because of his size, Andre the Giant was sometimes denied the standard dignity offered to, and taken for granted by, people of average stature. Airplane bathrooms are so small that they're tough to navigate for many adults, but they at least offer privacy when one needs to attend to bodily functions. Using one of those tiny, onboard water closets was out of the question for Andre the Giant. He generally would try to use airport facilities before and after takeoff, but long flights would pose a challenge. During one particularly lengthy overseas trip out of Tokyo, Andre found himself in need of relief, and he informed the flight crew in a panic.

"They bring him to the back of the plane and into the area where they prepare the meals and stuff and get a big black garbage bag, and they string it up between some of those carts that they use for the drinks and everything," wrestler Brutus Beefcake told "Wrestling Shoot Interviews." "And so they basically pulled the curtains and Andre goes to town." This became standard practice on flights for Andre the Giant — he'd be offered a bucket, and a member of the crew would transfer the contents into the airplane lavatory.

Despite consuming staggering quantities of alcohol, Andre the Giant rarely staggered during wrestling matches. He didn't phone it in in the ring, either. Multiple wrestlers, including the great Jake "the Snake" Roberts, told CBS Sports that Andre went out of his way to make other performers look good.  However, that didn't seem to be the case in 1986.

In late May, Andre locked horns with Akira Maeda in Japan. Bleacher Report described it as "a bumbling, clumsy mess." It began with Andre bulldozing Maeda. A few maneuvers later, the giant was drenched in sweat and swaying like a sleepy pendulum. The action slowed to a stillness as Andre refused to move. Enraged, Maeda responded with vicious kicks and takedowns. The men received what looked like a mid-match lecture from another wrestler. Visibly disinterested, Andre rolled onto his back and let Maeda pin him.

Opinions on what happened vary. Some say Andre was soused. Others say he was asked to teach Maeda a lesson. Andre was known to cut opponents down to size when they got too big for their britches, and Maeda was notoriously ornery and cocky. But as Bleacher Report pointed out, Andre's health had begun deteriorating by that stage of his career. Moving became increasingly laborious. Even breathing burdened him as fluid accumulated around his heart. Drunk or sober, the giant was drowning in his sorrows.

Less than three months after the Akira Maeda match, filming for "The Princess Bride" began. Even if you lived under the rock Andre chucked at Wesley, you know he played the lovable Fezzik. William Goldman, who authored both the screenplay and the book that inspired it, told CNN it was the only casting choice he specifically envisioned while writing the script. It was an excellent choice.

Andre was so good it seems inconceivable that he wasn't already a Hollywood heavyweight champion. In previous acting gigs he had largely been cast as monsters and morons. Andre played Bigfoot, big galoots, and that big goofy demon in "Conan the Destroyer." "The Princess Bride" was a big departure because it emphasized his humanity and allowed his personality to shine. Like Fezzik, Andre was a sweet-natured colossus. In an interview with The Oregonian, co-star Cary Elwes called him "a real gentle giant" who "would give you the shirt off his back."

Andre gave so much of himself that his back gave out, Elwes recalled. For years, wrestlers battered him with chairs, and while making "The Princess Bride," Andre couldn't do most stunts because he was always in agony. Yet he always looked happy. Mandy Patinkin told NPR that Andre liked that no one stared at him on the set. But when he left, the stares came back.

While Andre the Giant had a delightful time on the set of "The Princess Bride," where he made his major motion picture acting debut as the giant Fezzik, he was in a tremendous amount of pain during filming and faced myriad physical difficulties. One group shot required the four male heroes of the film, including Andre as Fezzik, to ride white horses. "Andre the Giant couldn't fit on a horse because he was too big," director Rob Reiner told The Hollywood Reporter. "We couldn't get a horse that would hold Andre, he was 500 pounds, so we had to come up with a cable, a pulley system, and everything." Similar sequences in which the wrestler-actor had to carry actors Robin Wright and Cary Elwes were shot in the same way, with special rigs, because Andre the Giant's back pain was so severe that he couldn't manage the weight.

Working alongside Andre the Giant made Elwes privy to some of his colleague's legendary feats of alcohol consumption. Those acts weren't born out of celebration. "Andre didn't drink for the sake of drinking — Andre was in a lot of pain, God bless him," Elwes told The Daily Beast. "He was due to have an operation right after the shoot, and his doctor didn't know what kind of pain medication to give him because of his size, so the only way that he could deal with the pain was to drink alcohol."

While working on "The Princess Bride," Andre the Giant received a visit from WWE owner Vince McMahon. As the book "30 Years of WrestleMania" described, WrestleMania III was approaching. Fans were promised a "bigger, better, and badder" show than ever, and who better to fulfill that promise than wrestling's biggest star playing a bad guy? McMahon wanted Andre to face Hulk Hogan, the industry's premier babyface, in the main event. Framed as a meeting between "the irresistible force" and "the immovable object," the match would feature Hogan slamming the immovable Andre on his back.

Andre's back was in tatters. Remember the scene in "The Princess Bride" where the eponymous princess leaps from the castle into Fezzik's arms? She had to be suspended from wires because Andre couldn't support her falling weight. So how could he possibly star in the world's largest wrestling spectacle? To grant McMahon's wish, he had to have an unwanted back surgery.

To conceal Andre's operation from fans, the WWE pretended to suspend him "for not fulfilling contractual obligations." In reality, he was subjecting himself to unnecessary suffering. Hogan told Detroit News that Andre's "back was bad." Footage from their match says it all. The immovable object struggles to move, his face a parade of grimaces. Yet Andre somehow hoists Hogan on his beleaguered back and later allows himself to be slammed against the unforgiving mat. That moving sacrifice lifted wrestling to new heights.

In terms of magnitude, WrestleMania III was the brightest highlight of Andre the Giant's wrestling career. A record 93,173 fans packed the stands of the Pontiac Silverdome to see Andre and Hulk Hogan cement their legacies. It was the largest turnout for an indoor sporting event in all of North America, per "30 Years of WrestleMania." Aretha Franklin and Alice Cooper added to the enchantment. Sadly, someone very special missed Andre's special moment: his daughter.

Robin Christensen-Roussimoff was Andre's only child. Her mother Jean met him in the early 1970s. They became parents several years later. While Jean and Andre had a rocky relationship, Robin and Andre had almost no relationship. Per CBS Sports, she could only recall seeing her father five times in person.

On an episode of the Wrestle Zone Radio Podcast, Robin estimated Andre spent 298 days a year on the road during his heyday. He didn't take her with him, and she seldom watched wrestling on television. So Robin mostly knows her father through other wrestlers' memories, old recordings, and conversations with Cary Elwes. One of Andre's best friends said the gulf between him and his daughter "broke his heart." It must have made the weight of fame far heavier. However, Robin also suggested Andre kept a distance to shield her from the wrestling business. Given how people treated him, it makes sense. Small-minded people belittled the giant, and little kids often hid from him. Who would want their child to witness that?

Andre the Giant had repeatedly received an acromegaly (gigantism) diagnosis, but he declined medical treatment for the disease, which only added to the pain and strain he suffered over decades of professional wrestling. By the mid-1980s, he had little choice but to undergo a surgical operation to repair his back, because if he didn't, he'd soon lose the physical ability to wrestle at all, and thus lose his livelihood.

In 1986, surgeons operated on Andre the Giant in a groundbreaking procedure. "It was a famous surgery where they had to get new tools because the tools you'd use on normal human beings wouldn't work for him," wrestling writer Dave Meltzer told the Detroit News. Even after the surgery, Andre the Giant refused to take prescription pain medicines, fearing that he'd develop a dependency. "He hated pills, medicine, and painkillers and stuff, because he saw what it was doing to other guys," fellow wrestler Ted DiBiase told CBS Sports. "So the way Andre killed his pain and medicated himself was with booze."

While the 1986 back surgery enabled Andre the Giant to wrestle, it didn't do much to alleviate his pain or help other problems. "I've heard he was numb from the knees down and things like that," wrestling writer Dave Meltzer told the Detroit News. "He couldn't do much of anything, he could barely move." Prior to Andre's "Main Event" bout with Hulk Hogan at Wrestlemania III in 1987, the WWF reportedly asked Paul Orndorff ("Mr. Wonderful") to be on standby should the Giant be unable to perform due to medical reasons.

Andre the Giant continued to wrestle into the 1990s, primarily in tag team fights in Japan. Those were choreographed so that Andre, who needed the help of others to walk into the arena and get into the ring, could spend the majority of the bout standing by the ropes, waiting for his brief turn.

During his incredible career, Andre the Giant battled many beasts. He knocked out the great Gorilla Monsoon in a gimmick boxing match. He flung, flipped, and nearly flattened the famous Harley Race. He even defeated Hulk Hogan (albeit dishonestly) for the world title. The giant's biggest opponent, however, was time.

At age 23, Andre learned he could die by age 40, according to confidante Jackie McCauley. She explained to CBS Sports that Japanese doctors diagnosed his acromegaly and warned him of its lethality. They even offered to operate on him before time ran out. The giant declined. Rather than alter the body he believed God gave him, Andre used it to become a wrestling deity.

Back then, time was still on his side. Andre wowed crowds with his athleticism. He regularly performed the tombstone piledriver, wherein he held someone upside down and seemingly spiked their head into the mat by dropping to his knees. Twenty years later Andre's knees were buckling, and he was becoming entombed in his body. As the LA Times detailed, in the 1980s Andre started wearing a back brace. By the early 1990s, the "immovable object" was immobile. Hardcore wrestling pioneer Terry Funk revealed Andre had to have "huge chunks of bone" removed during multiple knee surgeries. Still a beloved star, he performed in Japan and Mexico in tag matches. Once a titan who carried the wrestling world, Andre now needed others to do the heavy lifting.

Andre Roussimoff wasn't always a towering individual who weighed several hundred pounds. His size was the result of a condition called acromegaly, colloquially known as gigantism. He wasn't diagnosed with it until well into adulthood and his career as the wrestler Andre the Giant. He easily demonstrated feats of strength in his mid-teens, when he started growing at a much faster rate and to a state larger than that of other children his age. Prior to that adolescent spurt retroactively attributed to a growth disorder, the future Andre the Giant was merely on the larger side of normal.

When he began getting significantly taller and heavier, Roussimoff's mother worried that the child, who had a birth weight of 13 pounds, would keep growing, forever. Indeed, she was right, as his acromegaly wasn't diagnosed until adulthood and then never treated. His death came in 1993, four years before that of his mother, Mariann Maraszek Roussimoff.

While Andre the Giant's relationship with his only child, Robin Christensen-Roussimoff, was limited to just a handful of brief meetings, the wrestler's connection to his daughter's mother was even less of a factor in his life. Former model Jean Christensen first met Andre the Giant in 1974, when she was working in the public relations department for what was then known as the World Wrestling Federation. While there was no initial romantic chemistry, Christensen slowly warmed to Andre after seeing him around work functions. She liked being with him because, as a tall woman, she could comfortably wear high heels and still be towered over.

The relationship was brief and ran its course, but not after a low number of intimate encounters. Christensen became pregnant, a surprise at the time because she had been led to believe that Andre the Giant was unable to procreate. The wrestler went so far as to deny paternity of the baby until he was forced to take a blood test. Even after his parentage was conclusively proven, he still refused to pay child support. After years of legal maneuvering, a court ordered Andre to pay Christensen $750 in monthly child support payments, upped to $1,000 just before his death.

Known at the time as the WWF, the biggest wrestling promotion in the United States of the 1980s scripted and staged its matches, with outcomes and even individual moves planned out in advance so as to limit injury and enhance the theatricality and spectacle of it all. Wrestlers positioned as heroes and villains were coworkers or friends behind the scenes, and they didn't hate each other with the same passion depicted in the ring and on-screen. However, Andre the Giant really did harbor a significant distaste for opposing WWF wrestler "Macho Man" Randy Savage.

Savage preferred to carefully prep his matches beforehand, while Andre the Giant liked to take more of an improvised approach. That's essentially creative differences, and Savage's style bothered Andre. On one occasion, Savage delayed a pre-bout meeting with his opponent until just before showtime. Covered in shimmering baby oil, Savage asked Andre about the match's finishing moves. Andre was so annoyed that during the match, he threw preparation out the window and violently unloaded on Savage.

Andre the Giant remained in the employ of the WWF until 1991, although in a greatly diminished role and with few landmark moments after his Wrestlemania III bout with Hulk Hogan. He didn't actually wrestle all that much, and after a surgical procedure on a leg, he required the use of a cane or crutches to walk. As his pain increased and body deteriorated, Andre the Giant quietly took out his personal and professional frustrations on his boss, WWF leader Vince McMahon. The two had once enjoyed a nice friendship built out of a mutually beneficial business arrangement, but that fell apart in the final years of Andre's life.

"No longer was it this loving, warming admiration we had for each other. It wasn't there," McMahon said in the documentary "Andre the Giant" (via WhatCulture). McMahon can't remember the last time he spoke with Andre the Giant before they drifted apart and the wrestler died.

By early 1993, Andre the Giant had retired to the cattle ranch he'd purchased years earlier in Ellerbe, North Carolina. A few days after entertaining his friend, handler, and former referee Tim White, the wrestler received word that back home in France, his father, Boris, was terminally ill and not likely to survive much longer. 

Andre the Giant went through the difficult task of squeezing his body into an airplane and took the long international flight home. Boris Roussimoff died in Paris on January 15, 1993, at the age of 85. After attending his father's funeral, Andre elected to remain in France at least through his mother's birthday on January 24. On January 27, he had his driver take him back to his small hometown of Molien for a visit, and then back to his hotel in Paris that same day. Sometime in the night, Andre the Giant died in his sleep.

There are things a person never outgrows, even if that person never stops growing. For Andre the Giant, that thing was cards. CBS Sports reported that Andre delighted in playing cribbage. That pastime followed him from farm life to fame, and not even wrestling got in the way. Friend and in-ring adversary Jake Roberts recalled, "He was very serious about his cribbage game to the point of 'Screw the match, we're not through with this game yet,' you know? He wouldn't walk away."

No matter what hand life dealt him, Andre continued playing cards. In January 1993, his father died. He returned to France and remained for his mother's birthday. On January 27, he surrounded himself with lifelong friends and immersed himself in cards. By 8 the next morning, Andre's giant, gentle, card-loving heart had stopped beating. He was 46.

In death, just as in life, Andre's size hindered him. As the LA Times reported, he wanted to have his body cremated within 48 hours and his ashes spread over his North Carolina ranch. But no crematorium in France could handle a man of his magnitude. So best friends Jackie McCauley and Frenchy Bernard flew his body to America, where it was reduced to 17 pounds of ashes, according to Bleacher Report.

Andre named three people in his will: Jackie, Frenchy, and his daughter Robin. He signed it not as Andre but "A. Roussimoff," a man everyone stared at but few people actually saw.