http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7812

Movie villains more likely to light up
22:00 08 August 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Anna Gosline

Smoking is for losers, at least on film. A study of 1990s blockbuster
movies has found that onscreen smokers tend to be poor and villainous. But
while the habit may have fallen from its previous glamorous status,
impressionable adolescents are likely still seduced by the ‘cool’ factor, researchers
warn.

“In the movie Payback, Mel Gibson's character was low class and a
thief. But he was unquestionably the hero of the movie and extremely cool,” says
lead author Karan Omidvari at St Michael’s Medical Center in Newark, US.
“And teenagers are at the age when it’s good to be bad.”

Omidvari and his colleagues recorded the prevalence of smoking in the
top five characters from all top 10 US movies released between 1990 and
2000 – a whopping 447 movies. They found that 24% of the leading characters lit
up at least once during the movie. The figure is nearly identical to the
prevalence of smoking in the general US population.

And it was the independent filmmakers – not Hollywood - who really
piled on the smoke. R-rated (with adult content) independent movies had about
half their characters puffing away. In comparably rated studio films less
than a third indulged partook.

And characters who did smoke tended to be less than admirable.
Thirty-six per cent of bad guys smoked, compared to 21% of good guys or heroes.
Furthermore, almost half of ‘low’ socioeconomic status characters were
seen to light up, compared to a mere 10% of rich characters. The findings
are in stark contrast to previous studies on tobacco in movies, which report
that silver-screen smokers were typically affluent and attractive white
males.

But Anna Adachi-Mejia at Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, US, says
that it does not matter what kinds of characters are smoking. “Movie stars
are powerful role models. Regardless of if actors are portraying a ‘bad’ or
‘good’ person, the alarming issue is that kids are still seeing smoking
being modelled.”