Smoking loses its star role

`A cigarette in the hands of a Hollywood star is a gun aimed at 12 or 14-year-old kid. The gun will go off when the kid is an adult. We in Hollywood know the gun will go off, yet we hide behind a smokescreen of phrases like creative freedom and artistic liberty` - Joe Eszterhas, one of the highest paid American screenwriters credited with such works as Showgirls, Sliver and Basic Instinct.
In pic: Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. Stone`s cigarette-between-the-lips pin-up drove young girls to ape a lethal habit. Many blew rings in the air as a mark of supposed liberation