Celebrities Smokers

Johnny Depp started to smoke marlboro cigarettes at 12, and played guitar in a rock band called The Flame. He lost his virginity to a groupie at 13, in the band’s van. His parents divorced when Depp was in high school, and Depp soon dropped out to pursue music full-time. Rechristened The Kids and later Six Gun Method, the band moved to Los Angeles, and had their biggest moment as an opening act for Iggy Pop.

Depp struggled to get by, but eventually met Nicolas Cage, who suggested he try auditioning for film and TV work. His first major role was in A Nightmare on Elm Street, as a young boy plagued by bad dreams. Depp sprang to fame in the lead role on the upstart Fox network’s first show, 21 Jump Street, playing a baby-faced cop recruited to infiltrate high schools and young criminals’ gangs. At the time, 21 Jump Street was Fox’s biggest (and only) hit, but Depp abhorred being a “teen heartthrob” and left after three seasons.

Depp often takes roles in darker films, appearing as a robotic topiarist in Edward Scissorhands (1990), Ed Wood in Ed Wood (1994), and Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Other roles tend to play more on his looks, such as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003).
He had “Winona forever” tattooed on his arm while engaged to Winona Ryder. After they broke up he had the tattoo reworked to read “Wino forever”. Depp owned the nightclub where River Phoenix overdosed in 1993. He now lives in France.

Fashion and smoking have been inextricably linked for decades. Models smoke on catwalks and in fashion spreads. Supermodels such as Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss appear in the celebrity press smoking in “real life”.

And some fashion designers are happy to associate their brand and products with smoking, such as the ads for Gucci handbags that appeared in several top European fashion magazines last autumn showing cigarette ash “stylishly” scattered across their expensive bags. The graphic qualities of the marlboro cigarette are compounded by its associations.

Fashion loves the idea of smoking: think of Yves Saint Laurent’s “Le Smoking” jacket, or the cigarette pant. For women – particularly young women – cheap cigarettes have always had a connotation of independence.

A cigarette creates an air of self-sufficiency: with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in another, a woman has no need of a man’s hand to hold. In real life, at social occasions when they feel on display, many women will light up a cigarette as a prop as much as for the buzz, echoing the function of smoking in fashion.

Whenever we look at behind the set photos at fashion events, many a times the models are seen with cigarettes in their hand. Many even say they smoke to fill a hunger void. However, as we’ve seen with Camel taking on the beauty angle with Camel No.9, Camel Blue Cigarettes, Camel Filter Cigarettes and Camel Silver Cigarettes

Davidoff Cigarettes decided to promote its brand at a pre-fashion week party in Australia.

Buy Cheap Cigarettes.

Today is World No Tobacco Day. We asked students at St. James Middle School in Johnson City to write their thoughts about tobacco and the influence on kids of celebrities smokers and athletes using cigarettes online.


Michaela: “Many people are influenced by media pressure. Many kids give in to that pressure. They see someone they think is cool smoking Parliament Cigarettes and think, ‘I want to be like them.’ So they grab a cigarette and start that life-killing habit. The more famous people (smoking), the more likely kids are to smoke.”

» Hunter: “Media almost endorses smoking. Actors, athletes and musicians smoke, and kids can see that and want to be like their idol. Once you start, smoking is hard to stop and you can die.”

» Brendan: “Smoking doesn’t just affect the smokers; it affects everyone around them.”

» Ben: “When baseball players chew tobacco, young kids want to do it because they look up to them.”

» Nathan: “I think chew in the MLB should be prohibited. I strongly think that if a kid wants to play pro baseball, he will want to be like those already playing and will want to chew.”

» Clayton: “When they show those people chewing tobacco, it does somewhat influence me to chew tobacco. If you begin to chew, it can turn into a habit.”

» Andrea: “The media shouldn’t show people using tobacco because it can influence others. If kids see their heroes smoking, they might think it is OK.”

» Meghan: “Just because stars do it doesn’t mean it’s right. It causes lifelong diseases and death. My grandpa died before I met him from this.”

» Hunter: “Put warnings before movies that show tobacco or drugs.”

» Brenna: “Tobacco should be banned from TV shows and movies that kids watch. Smoking has a very bad influence on the kids of the world.”

» Rachel: “When kids hear singers like Lady Gaga singing about tobacco, they are affected. They will do what they think is cool.”

» Erin: “Many kids saw Charlie Sheen smoking and using drugs. It’s a bad influence.”

» Olivia: “Also, seeing advertisements influences kids. Tobacco companies promote their products at kids’ eye level.”

» Olenka: “Teens are more influenced than anyone else.”

» Natalie: “Look at that famous actress. She’s beautiful, everyone likes her and she’s smoking. Many people look up to her, strive to be like her. Teens should be aware that to be like a celebrity, they don’t have to smoke.”

» Sawyer: “Stars and role models will ‘light up,’ kids look up to them and have a 16 percent more chance of smoking. Every time you [smoke], you lose a minute of your life. Smoking costs a lot. I think we’d all rather go to Disney than smoke.”

» Liam: “If you see your role model smoking a cigarette, don’t follow them!”

Chris Brown deserved a lot of the criticism he received for what he did to Rihanna two years ago, but people are just itching to jump on him for anything. First there was the twisted “mishap” remark. Now it’s a story and photo of the R&B star driving and smoking Vogue cigarettes that caused an uproar in the last few days.

The short version is that celebrity news and photo agency X17 Online implied Brown was smoking a marijuana joint while driving. That would be bad.
Too bad (for the haters) that it wasn’t true.
Brown’s rep, in no uncertain terms, flatly squashed the site’s report and clarified the singer’s actions. Soon enough, the photo in question was taken down.
“The report made by X17 Online on March 14, 2011, headlining ‘Is Chris Brown Half-Baked Behind The Wheel?’ is false,” his rep exclusively told E! News.

“The picture shows Chris Brown with a Davidoff cigarette mini natural pack mild cigarillo. The same cigar he held in the photo of his In My Zone mixtape CD cover.”

There you go. A legal substance (as was the salvia being smoked in the Miley Cyrus bong video) and another false bit of Chris Brown gossip debunked.

Celebrity Smoker: Robert Pattinson

Twilight star Robert Pattinson gets his nicotine fix as he is out and about in New York on 15 June 2009, which he used to buy online cigarettes.


Robert Pattinson picture quiz - how much do you really know about the Twilight star?










Celebrity Smoker: Cheryl Cole

Cheryl Cole is spotted having a cigarette break with Simon Cowell while filming The X Factor boot-camp auditions in London on 2 August 2009. She also is used to buy cigarettes online.







Celebrity Smoker: Geri Halliwell

Geri Halliwell has a cigarette smoke while on vacation in Sardinia on 7 June 2009.

Zippo lighters have retained their retro cool even as the tiny northwestern Pennsylvania company that makes themzippo clothing line gets ready to celebrate its 80th anniversary and 500 millionth lighter next year.

But with pressure increasing on folks not to smoke, Zippo Manufacturing Co. is hoping to capitalize on its brand by offering a wider variety of products — from watches to leisure clothing to cologne — through kiosks and Zippo-brand specialty stores designed to showcase the durable image reinforced by each distinctive lid “click” of its brass-encased, lifetime-guaranteed lighters.

Realizing that producing 18 million lighters a year in the mid-1990s was probably the company’s high-water mark — Zippo’s 550 employees will produce about 12 million lighters this year — the company started marketing research before president and chief executive officer Gregory Booth was hired 10 years ago.

The surveys asked consumers the question Booth must answer today: “What kind of products could we sell other than cigarette lighters that people would accept as Zippo products?”

The research shows the company — tucked into a valley above the Allegheny National Forest, some 130 miles northeast of Pittsburgh — could sell other products — if they fit Zippo’s image, which Booth describes as “rugged, durable, made in America, iconic.”

“It has to be something that feels like Zippo,” Booth said of the travel bags, backpacks, watches, sunglasses, jeans and leisure shirts, wallets, pens, liquor flasks, outdoor hand warmers, playing cards and even a fragrance. Manufactured by Italian perfumer Mavive, it comes in a lighter-shaped canister (and, yes, a lid that clicks).

Marketing experts said all that makes sense provided that Zippo’s new products stay true to the brand — and that the company learns quickly that selling jeans, or any other product, comes with a whole menu of unique business complexities.

“A brand is just a story attached to a product. Like any narrative, it carries sensation. Zippo’s story is ‘manly independence,’” said James Twitchell, a marketing expert whose book “Lead Us Into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism” argues that Americans have increasingly turned to brand names, instead of religion, for their identity.

“As long as this narrative is in place it can be attached to any other product as long as the product doesn’t contradict the story line,” Twitchell said, noting Eddie Bauer-branded sport-utility vehicles nonetheless stay true to the sportswear company’s image of “wanderlust.”

Another branding consultant who founded the self-named PaulJLucas.com in Washington, D.C., said Zippo’s plans remind him of the success that Victorinox Swiss Army Brands Inc. has had selling watches, luggage, clothing and fragrances.

“It’s all high-quality, and they did it right, and I buy their stuff,” said Lucas, noting that Swiss Army luggage is as rugged as its trademarked multi-purpose knives.

But not any brand — even American icons — can be used to sell just anything.

“Harley-Davidson once, believe it or not, tried to sell bottled water, and it just tanked,” Lucas said.

His advice is to stick to products closer to a brand’s core. That’s why he likes Zippo’s still-on-the-drawing board plans for patio gas grills but isn’t so crazy about the idea of Zippo cologne — noting that lighter fluid is the only other liquid odor associated with Zippo.

Booth insists Zippo’s plans are built on solid market research and, perhaps as important, fueled by necessity.

“We recognize there’s a lot of pressure on smoking and it’s only gotten worse in the last 10 years,” Booth said, even though Zippo aggressively markets its lighters to collectors, aficionados and even non-smokers, with more than a dozen models in hundreds of colors and unique designs. Although the lighters are generally plated with nickel chrome, some lighters are even covered with gold or platinum.

But Booth believes those varieties can only take the company so far.

“We knew we were invested in an industry that was under pressure and knew we could go the way of the Hula Hoop and not do anything about it,” Booth said.

Instead, Zippo hired David Warfel as its director of global marketing three years ago, to capitalize on his branding experience with Xerox, Kodak and Ray-Ban.

Zippo already sells its lighters in more than 160 countries — but it does so through wholesalers and other distributors. Warfel was hired to take control of the Zippo “brand” and expand it, at first overseas and then gradually in the United States.

The newest wing of the company’s headquarters is a showcase for Zippo’s plans. It features a Zippo kiosk and what’s known as a “shop-in-shop” — a tiny Zippo store meant to take up residence inside a larger department store — and a prototype Zippo specialty store, which the company plans to put in overseas shopping districts.

All three retail spaces feature custom-designed black-framed, glass showcases that “fit together like Legos” so retailers can create their own “Zippo area” in just about any size space, Warfel said.

Zippo will push its expanded product line overseas, at first, because foreign consumers are familiar with the brand’s durable image without it being “almost umbilically tied to cigarette lighters,” Booth said. U.S. consumers “are so tied to Zippo lighters that it’s tough for the customer to make the jump to these other products.”

Although there are plans for a Zippo kiosk at Kennedy International Airport in New York City by the end of April, most Zippo outlets will first arrive in China, other parts of Asia, or western Europe. It doesn’t hurt that Asia remains a key smoking market, with China consuming one-third of the world’s smoking tobacco, something Booth calls a “monstrous opportunity” to grow Zippo.

In 18 months or so, Zippo hopes to open more stateside retail outlets, in places like Las Vegas and Niagara.