Boisdale Of Canary Wharf

Cigars have had a supporting role to play on the big screen since the early days of movies. As early as 1931, Charlie Chaplin’s cigar became a slapstick prop in City Lights, a movie widely considered the comedian’s masterpiece.

But in most films, it’s not usually the comics who smoke cigars. In most movies, cigars are used to signify a certain level of sophistication – a costume piece to show that the cigar-smoking character is a cut above the other characters in the film. Consider that in the Dirty Dozen, a 1967 war movie, only one character smokes a cigar: the two-star general who is the highest ranking officer in the film. What do all the other characters smoke? Mere cigarettes. Cigars on the silver screen represent both status and wealth.

Famous Cigar Smokers on the Big Screen

Jack Nicholson

In 1973, actor Jack Nicholson abandoned cigarettes for cigars beginning with the movie The Last Detail. Nicholson plays a tough naval petty officer who smokes only Cuban cigars.

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Al Pacino

A decade later, Al Pacino played the cigar-smoking Cuban gangster Scarface in the movie of the same title. And Al Pacino wasn’t the only actor to play a gangster tough-guy with a love of cigars.

Albert Finney

Albert Finney played Irish gangster Leo O’Bannon in the 1990 film Miller’s Crossing. Finney’s best scene in Miller’s Crossing is generally considered the scene in which he rids himself of a host of assassins, while finishing his cigar at the same time.

Clint Eastwood

In Westerns, too, cigars have a role to play. Clint Eastwood smoked cigars in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – specifically, Virginians, a skinny American cigar with a strong flavor. Eastwood’s man with no name also appeared with his trademark cigars in the two movies leading up to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965). This is despite the fact that Eastwood has publicly stated that he hates cigars, but that they fit the character he was playing at the time.

Will Smith / Jeff Goldblum / Pierce Brosnan

In more recent times, cigars haven’t always been the trademark of the rough-and-tumble tough guys and bad guys. In Independence Day, Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum smoke a cigar of celebration in a slightly goofy scene inside an alien spaceship just before they blow it up and win the day. And Pierce Brosnan’s version of James Bond didn’t smoke cigarettes as he had in the past, but cigars.

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Rose McGowan

Even when women smoke cigars, such as bad-girl Rose McGowan in Lewis and Clark and George, the cigar still represents a sense of rebelliousness mingled with class – much like cigar smokers themselves.