My study shows a striking fact: the paucity of women among America's movie stars. Of the 129 movie stars between 1932 and 1984, 81 (63 percent) have been men and only 48 (37 percent) women. Male domination of movie stardom has been a consistent fact, though there have been historical fluctuations in the number and ratio of male to female stars.

Movie stars are not necessarily the most talented or the most esteemed players in their profession. Rather, they are the most popular and highest-paid performers, who embody in their screen roles and public images relevant values that are supported by current moviegoers. Film stars have functioned as icons in American popular culture, defining and symbolizing for the rest of society roles and behaviors that are normatively appropriate at a given historical time.

Clint Eastwood is the director of “Flags of Our Fathers,” which has just been named Best Picture of the year by the National Board of Review, and “Letters from Iwo Jima.”

Eddie Murphy plays Jimmy, the flamboyant womanizer and drug-addict R&B singer in the musical “Dreamgirls.” Murphy is the most commercially successful African-American actor in the history of the motion picture business, and is one of the industry‚Äôs top-five overall box-office performers.

Nov 22, 2006–Robert Altman, the iconoclastic, independent director of such films as “MASH,” “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” “Nashville,” “The Player” and “Gosford Park,” died Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of complications due to cancer. He was 81.