Smoking was fairly common in classic Hollywood movies, but a new study says smoking in movies is making a comeback.

Emily Watson lounges and smokes in Gosford Park, Gene Hackman and Gwyneth Paltrow light up in The Royal Tenenbaums. Billy Bob Thornton's co-star in The Man Who Wasn't There said all Thornton's character does on screen is smoke and breathe.

Stan Glantz, a professor at the University of California-San Francisco, who studied movie smoking from the 1960s to 2000, said the lead characters in films are four times more likely to smoke than real people.

"If you look at the imagery of smoking in the movies as it's presented, it really looks much more like a cigarette advertisement," he said.

Glantz's campaign for smoke-free movies tried to place an advertisement in Daily Variety objecting to Sissy Spacek's smoking and a prominent pack of Marlboros in the film, In the Bedroom.

Variety rejected the ad, saying it unfairly singled out one movie. And the director said smoking was necessary for Spacek's character.

"She smokes four cigarettes in the film that are very specific moments, and they're for very specific reasons," said the film's director and co-writer, Todd Field.

These days, Rob Reiner, for one, keeps smoking out of his own movies, because he said it sends a bad message.

"I do notice every time somebody lights up a cigarette in the movies, I'm always aware of it," Reiner said. "And I will say as it happens, 'Why did they need to do that?'"

"That it has become a cliche-that a certain kind of character smokes," said Lindsay Doran, a Hollywood producer. "And when people think of it that way, sometimes they're challenged to do something else."

In Saving Private Ryan, Tom Hanks was given a nervous twitch in his hand, instead of a cigarette.

But in the current film Monster's Ball, one of the writers says smoking is a creative choice. Maybe the guy would smoke, but some say every time an actor lights up a cigarette on screen, it seems to spark an argument.

(Agencies)