Film stars — performers whose names, likenesses, biographies and appearances circulate as commodities outside of the films they appear in — are often featured in histories and theories of fame or religion that account for the phenomenon of persons renowned among a great number of people or across wide temporal dimensions. Within film theory, the film star is usually discussed in relation to the sociology and phenomenology of film viewing, theories of enunciation and authorship, the role of film and film actors in the marketplace of capitalist economies (i.e., in industrial production and mass circulation of commodities), as well as in relation to theories of spectator identification, audience (even national) adulation and fan fascination. These theoretical lenses are not mutually exclusive and, in fact, theories focused on one of these contexts usually implicitly or explicitly address questions pertinent to the others.

Theorists working within film studies or “star studies” contexts since the 1970s typically identify and examine stardom as a discursive construct — that is, as constructed out of a variety of media representations that produce and are produced by culturally and historically situated meanings — and much of what follows in this essay explores their theories. However, early film theorists concerned with defining the aesthetic and phenomenological and, in some cases sociological, qualities of film form often used the acting or appearance of stars in films, and their own responses to them, to describe not only what is cinematically specific and sociologically important about that form, but also what makes film viewing such a powerful, affective experience.

The Star and the Power of the Filmic Image

Many film theorists writing in the 1920s explored cinematic specificity against the aesthetic properties of literature, theater, painting and photography. These writers believed that the camera was an instrument of knowledge and identified the close- up shot as exemplary not only of film's uniqueness as an art form but also as a significant mode of communication about the world. French theorist Louis Delluc, credited by French theorist and film director Jean Epstein as the originator of the term photogenie, wrote that “the cinema will make us all comprehend the things of this world as well as force us to recognize ourselves” (Delluc, 139).