These are some of the questions provoked by star images in newspapers, magazines, chat shows, record sleeves, and not least films and videos. In the past stars have been studied as cogs in a mass entertainment industry selling desires and ideologies, but since the 1970s these economic, ideological, and psychological investigations have been replaced by new explorations in film and cultural studies. These fresh debates try to account for the role of the star in producing meanings, pleasures and identites to a diversity of audiences. Stardom brings together for the first time some of the major writing of the last decade which seeks to understand the phenomenon of stars and stardom. Commissioned articles arising from new research in essays by academics established in the field such as Andrew Britton, Richard Dyer, Charles Eckert, Jane Gaines, Charlotte Herzog, Barry King, Kovena Nercer, Tessa Perkins, and Janet Staiger. Gathered under four headings - The System, Stars and Society, Performers and Signs, Desire and Politics - these essays represent the range of questions raised by stardom, and exemplify approaches drawn from film history, sociology, textual analysis, audience research, psychoanalysis, and cultural politics. They highlight issues of representation and the cultural limitations and possibilities of stars.