AFI's 100 Years…100 Stars

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Part of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years…100 Stars is a list of the top 50 stars of American cinema, 25 male and 25 female. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute on a June 16, 1999 CBS special hosted by Shirley Temple, with 50 current actors making the presentations.

The list

The legends were presented by 50 current actors:

Kevin Bacon, Alec Baldwin, Jacqueline Bisset, Ernest Borgnine, James Caan, Jim Carrey, Chevy Chase, Cher, Kevin Costner, Billy Crystal, Geena Davis, Laura Dern, Matt Dillon, Richard Dreyfuss, Clint Eastwood, Mia Farrow, Bridget Fonda, Peter Fonda, Morgan Freeman, Teri Garr, Whoopi Goldberg, Jeff Goldblum, Woody Harrelson, Richard Harris, Goldie Hawn, Gregory Hines, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Michael Keaton, Martin Landau, Jessica Lange, Shirley MacLaine, Marsha Mason, Marlee Matlin, Mike Myers, Edward Norton, Edward James Olmos, Miss Piggy, Lynn Redgrave, Julia Roberts, Gena Rowlands, Kevin Spacey, Sylvester Stallone, Rod Steiger, Sharon Stone, Barbra Streisand, Billy Bob Thornton, Lily Tomlin, Emily Watson, and James Woods

Additional information

• Lillian Gish has the longest film career - 75 years.
• Laurence Olivier has the longest career among the men - 59 years.
• There are four living female stars (Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley Temple, Lauren Bacall and Sophia Loren) and two male legends (Kirk Douglas and Sidney Poitier).
• Marlon Brando, Sidney Poitier and Sophia Loren all had screen debuts in 1950, the cutoff year chosen by the AFI.
• Ten screen legends made up five famous duos: Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and Clark Gable and Joan Crawford. The Marx Brothers are the only group on the list.
• Thirteen legends made the transition from silent to sound films: Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Barbara Stanwyck, Lillian Gish, Carole Lombard, Mary Pickford, Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin, Gary Cooper, John Wayne, the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton and Edward G. Robinson. However, of these, Stanwyck, Lombard, Gable, Copper, Wayne, Robinson and the Marx Brothers were little more than extras during the silent period, each with no more than two or three credits. As such, the only legends who were stars both during the silent and sound eras are Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Gish, Pickford, Keaton and Chaplin's careers went into decline very quickly during the 1930s. Garbo's career ended in 1942. Only Joan Crawford managed to forge a career as an actress and star of continued note, ending her work as an actress in 1976, the year before her death, giving her a career span of fifty-five years as a star of stage, film and television.
• Thirteen legends were born outside America: Audrey Hepburn in Belgium; Ingrid Bergman and Greta Garbo in Sweden; Marlene Dietrich in Germany; Claudette Colbert in France; Vivien Leigh in India; Sophia Loren in Italy; Mary Pickford in Canada; Edward G. Robinson in Romania; and Elizabeth Taylor, Cary Grant, Charlie Chaplin, and Laurence Olivier in England. Eight were born in New York: Barbara Stanwyck, Mae West, Rita Hayworth, Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Burt Lancaster and the Marx Brothers.
• Two films featured the largest number of listed legends. In How the West was Won, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, John Wayne, and Gregory Peck acted, while Spencer Tracy narrated. The lesser known Slippery Pearls (or Stolen Jools), a 20-minute short film made to benefit a sanitarium for tuberculosis, includes Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper, Buster Keaton and Edward G. Robinson.

External links

• AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars
• List of the 500 nominated star legends.
• List of the 50 winning legends.