Within the intertwined areas of film, TV and media research, studies of stardom have developed into a rich field with numerous approaches. This book offers a collection of essays that make enquiries into aspects of stardom in Europe, studying the significance of the subject, its particular incarnations and areas of possible research within film and TV. The essays enter into a dialogue with each other on many different crisscrossing levels from individual to national, from private (lives) to public (images) and from scholarly ground research to theoretical explanation. This book, based on contributions to the fourth Popular European Cinema Conference on ‘Methods and Stars’, was nominated Project of the Month by the Swedish Research Council in December 2007 in its capacity of a tribute to the importance of star studies and research in European cinema. The book expands on the seemingly contradictory question of why certain truly popular stars have become obliterated from hegemonic accounts of (European) film history. In doing so, this volume also exposes the equally vital impulse to connect stars to a specific national identity – through language and national memory, specific genres or classics in the national canon, stereotyping, other national media, and so on. Stardom may be international (or trans-national) and some stars may export better than others, but national audiences bond with what they perceive as ‘their’ stars. Yet, some of the authors ask the more puzzling question of whether stars, or a star-system, actually exist in their country, pointing to the inescapable weight of the Hollywood model for film audiences and scholars alike. Authors: Alexander Dhoest (Belgium), Sonja de Leeuw (Utrecht), Elisabetta Girelli (Scotland), Susan Hayward (Exeter), Vinzenz Hediger (Bochum), Olof Hedling (Sweden), Gunnar Iversen (Trondheim), Harri Kalha, Anu Koivunen (Stockholm), Maaret Koskinen (Stockholm), Annette Kuhn (London), Kimmo Laine (Oulu), Marcia Landy (Pittsburgh), Leif Ove Larsen (Bergen), Paul Lesch (Luxembourg and Miami), Giuliana Muscio (Padua), Lydia Papadimitriou (Liverpool), Gill Plain (St Andrews), Alexandra Schneider (Berlin), Robert Shail (Lampeter), Maddalena Spazzini (Rome), Andrew Spicer (England), Tytti Soila (Stockholm).