A-list
An A-list celebrity is one at the very top of their field. It may be a bankable movie star, a major recording artist, international sports star, film director, mogul, or an international TV broadcaster.
The A-list is part of a larger guide called The Hot List that has become an industry-standard guide in Hollywood. James Ulmer has also developed a Hot List of directors.[1] The Ulmer scale categorizes the lists into A+, A, B+, B, C, and D listings.
Popular usage
In popular usage outside the film industry, an "A-list celebrity" is any person with an admired or desirable social status.[2] Even socialites with popular press coverage and elite associations have been termed as "A-list" celebrities. Similarly, less popular persons and current teen idols are referred to as "B-list" – and the ones with lesser fame "C-list".[3] Entertainment Weekly interpreted C-list celebrity as "that guy (or sometimes that girl), the easy-to-remember but hard-to-name character actor".[4]
"D-list" is for a person whose celebrity is so obscure that they are generally only known for appearances as so-called celebrities on panel game shows and reality television. Kathy Griffin, a U.S. comedian who became widely known for her frequent appearances on such programs, used the term in a tongue-in-cheek manner for her 2005 TV special The D-List and her 2005 TV series Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List. It is also the lowest rating used by U.S. journalist James Ulmer for his Ulmer Scale which ranks the bankability of 1,400 movie actors worldwide.[5] Other successive letters of the alphabet beyond D, such as "E-list" or "Z-list", are sometimes used for exaggeration or comic effect but effectively have the same meaning as D-list.[6]
See also
- Bankable star
- B movies (Hollywood Golden Age)
- Celebrity
- Famous for being famous
- Movie star
- Superstar
References
- ↑ "About The Ulmer Scale". The Ulmer Scale.
- ↑ American Heritage Dictionary Archived October 13, 2007, at the Wayback Machine.
- ↑ Encarta Archived 2009-10-31 at WebCite, Webster's New Millennium Dictionary. Archived October 31, 2009.
- ↑ Podolsky, Erin (November 10, 2000). "C-list celebrities – Three sites with information on 'that one guy' you see in movies from time to time". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on April 25, 2009. Retrieved April 14, 2009.
- ↑ Ulmer Scale Hot List Archived December 14, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.
- ↑ Blalock, Meghan. "The 50 Most Infamous D-List Celebrities of All Time". stylecaster.com. stylecaster.com. Retrieved 2 September 2016.