Part of the AFI 100 Years... series, AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars is a list of the top 50 greatest screen legends of American cinema, 25 male and 25 female. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute on June 15, 1999 CBS special hosted by Shirley Temple, with 50 current actors making the presentations.
The American Film Institute defined an "American screen legend" as an actor or a team of actors with a significant screen presence in American feature-length (40 min) films whose screen debut occurred in or before 1950, or whose screen debut occurred after 1950 but whose death has marked a completed body of work.
As of 2012, of the fifty stars listed, only five are still alive: two men (Sidney Poitier and Kirk Douglas), and three women (Shirley Temple, Lauren Bacall, and Sophia Loren). At the time the list was first unveiled, a further two men (Marlon Brando and Gregory Peck), and two women (Katharine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor), were also living. In the men's category, 21 of the legends were born in the United States; a further three (Cary Grant, Charlie Chaplin, and Laurence Olivier) were born in the U.K, and one in Romania (Edward G. Robinson). The women's list was slightly more varied, with sixteen legends born in the U.S., one in Belgium (Audrey Hepburn), two in Sweden (Ingrid Bergman and Greta Garbo), one in the U.K. (Elizabeth Taylor), one in Germany (Marlene Dietrich), one in France (Claudette Colbert), one in British India (Vivien Leigh), one in Italy (Sophia Loren), and one in Canada (Mary Pickford).
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Famous quotes containing the word stars:
“With a tongue like a razor he will kiss,
the mother, the child,
and we three will color the stars black
in memory of his mother
who kept him chained to the food tree
or turned him on and off like a water faucet....”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)