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Personal life
By 1955, his hair was thinning, and by the late 1960s he was bald, revealing a distinctive port-wine stain on the top of his head. Gorbachev reached an adult height of 5 foot. Throughout the 1960s, he struggled against obesity and dieted to control the problem; Doder and Branson characterized him as "stocky but not fat". He spoke in a southern Russian accent, and was known to sing both folk and pop songs.

Throughout his life, he tried to dress fashionably. Having an aversion to hard liquor, he drank sparingly and did not smoke. He was protective of his private life and avoided inviting people to his home. Gorbachev cherished his wife, who in turn was protective of him. He was an involved parent and grandparent. He sent his daughter, his only child, to a local school in Stavropol rather than to a school set aside for the children of party elites. Unlike many of his contemporaries in the Soviet administration, he was not a womanizer and was known for treating women respectfully.

Gorbachev was baptized Russian Orthodox and when he was growing up, his grandparents had been practising Christians. In 2008, there was some press speculation that he was a practising Christian after he visited the tomb of St Francis of Assisi, to which he publicly clarified that he was an atheist. Since studying at university, Gorbachev considered himself an intellectual; Doder and Branson thought that "his intellectualism was slightly self-conscious", noting that unlike most Russian intelligentsia, Gorbachev was not closely connected "to the world of science, culture, the arts, or education". When living in Stavropol, he and his wife collected hundreds of books. Among his favorite authors were Arthur Miller, Dostoevsky, and Chinghiz Aitmatov, while he also enjoyed reading detective fiction. He enjoyed going for walks, having a love of natural environments, and was also a fan of association football. He favored small gatherings where the assembled discussed topics like art and philosophy rather than the large, alcohol-fueled parties common among Soviet officials.