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When Hollywood stages its annual Oscar gala we witness a corporation's awards banquet where the "employees of the year" are honored. It is an occasion where mundane jealousies seem to be buried, anniversaries are celebrated, long-time members applauded or new ones commended, and loyalty bonuses are handed out. Stars are often made here. And then new movies are made with them-movies for which these stars serve as commercial logos. In general, stars have always been the creation of the public, and their influence in the fields of social and public behavior, fashion, and values has been enormous. Often the name alone acquires the power to impress the seal of quality on the product and to promise a certain kind of quality entertainment, targeting specific viewer expectations. If a movie can muster Schwarzenegger it assures action and violence, the name Sharon Stone promises sex and suspense. Recognizing names is of utmost importance in a business that is flooded each year with indistinguishable film titles and often identical plotlines. It is the job of the stars to lend that special something to a film, to make the hype work.
References to a film as the new Julia Roberts movie' or the latest Schwarzenegger thriller' make it abundantly clear how the success of a movie hinges on the popularity of its star. In spite of occasional box-office flops, like Last Action Hero (1993) or Wi att Earp (1994), the big stars still remain bankable warranties that will avert a total disaster at the movie's theatrical release. After all, it is largely due to their names that movie distributors can hype up forthcoming products, a process which in many cases starts long before the movie's release. l Hollywood audiences have always liked to identify their stars with the characters they portray. The mingling of diegetic levels in film, in literary jargon referred to as metalepsis,2 goes as far back as the thirties, when Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy used their real names in their movies, thus encouraging an identification of their fictional with their actual personalities. In this way, the diegetic universe constructed in a movie becomes a surrogate `real-life' reality in the eyes of the beholder. It is the contention here that as a result of this fusion...