East Asian Film Stars brings together some of the world's leading cinema scholars to offer their insights into the work of regional and transnational screen legends, contemporary superstars and mysterious cult personas. This collection of original essays explores some of the most globally recognizable and popular, yet academically underexplored, film stars from Japan, Korea and Chinese language cinemas, placing them into their economic, cultural and social contexts, and discussing them in relation to notions of gender, ethnicity and identity. It offers an extension of star studies beyond its traditional geographical and cultural focus on Hollywood and European performers, exploring stardom across national and regional borders, and taking into account the increasingly important phenomenon of international co-productions and distribution that are aimed at diverse markets. East Asian Film Stars traverses disciplinary boundaries and considers film stardom as part of ever-changing cultural practices and discourses -- from publisher.