Onscreen, Evil Needs a Cigarette

THURSDAY, Aug. 18 (HealthDay News) -- Sharon Stone did it with killer cool in Basic Instinct. So did Al Pacino, playing no less than Satan in The Devil''s Advocate. In both cases, these actors lit up the screen while lighting up on screen.

And according to a new study, the type of evil roles they played represent the bulk of nicotine-addicted characters in American movies today.

In a sampling of 447 popular movies from the 1990s, researchers found that more than a third of these dastardly "antagonists" smoked. Poorer, more "unglamorous" characters were also more likely to light up -- raising the question of whether tobacco use is now linked to "badness" and/or poverty on screen.

In addition, the researchers also found that fewer than a quarter of all movie characters smoked, a percentage that''s equal to rates of smoking in the United States as a whole.

The finding conflicts with previous research that showed smoking omnipresent in movies -- a factor some health activists believe helps drive young people to take up the habit.

And the finding that it''s evil-doers who most often light up may run counter to the perception "that Hollywood is trying to get people to smoke," said study co-researcher Dr. Karan Omidvari, a pulmonologist at St. Michael''s Medical Center in Newark, N.J.

On the other hand, Omidvari said, there''s still too much smoking in movies, with much of it completely unnecessary.

Omidvari, a film buff, said he helped launch the study because he was skeptical about previous studies of smoking in the movies. He said they made little distinction regarding the context of tobacco use seen on screen.

Researchers examined 600 characters -- 300 women and 300 men -- in movies that placed in the Top 10 during weekly box-office reports in the 1990s. Some of the most well-known films include Jerry Maguire, There''s Something About Mary, and As Good as It Gets. Several types of movies -- including those that were animated or didn''t portray contemporary time periods, such as Titanic -- were excluded.

The study findings appear in the August 2005 issue of the journal Chest.

The researchers found that there was more smoking among male characters than female characters (roughly 26 percent versus 21 percent), among antagonists than protagonists (36 percent versus nearly 21 percent), and among poor people than rich people (48 percent versus close to 11 percent).

Independent film studios, which tend to make edgier movies, were more likely to include smoking, a sign that big Hollywood studios are actually "more responsible" than the smaller producers, Omidvari said.

And what of those cigarette-happy villains? Common sense would suggest that these characters -- like the noxious "Cigarette-Smoking Man" in the 1998 movie version of The X-Files -- are less likely to make teens want to light up.

On the other hand, Omidvari said, "it might be cool to be bad."

Another specialist on smoking in the movies disagreed with the new study''s conclusions regarding previous research into the issue but did agree that villains can be role models of a sort.

"You can''t generalize that all bad characters give anti-tobacco messages," said Kori Titus, spokeswoman for American Lung Association''s Sacramento chapter and Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down!, an ongoing project ranking movies by how they depict smoking.

However, Titus believes the New Jersey researchers are wrong to suggest that levels of smoking in U.S. movies are less harmful because they reflect levels in the American population as a whole.

"I would argue that the impact of movies on kids'' decisions is so much greater," she said. "If you see a total stranger walking down the street smoking a cigarette, that''s not going to have the same impact as seeing your favorite movie star larger than life, looking gorgeous."

More information

Check out more on nicotine and movie stars at Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down!

SOURCES: Karan Omidvari, M.D., intensive pulmonary care physician, Heart and Vascular Institute, St. Michael''s Medical Center, Newark, N.J.; Kori Titus, spokeswoman, American Lung Association and the Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down! Project, Sacramento, Calif; August 2005 Chest