Hollywood Cigars: Aficionados on Screen

Cinema culture is at the center of our lives. It has gilded our dreams with class and fine-living fantasies.

Every silver-screen hero requires an equally classic cigar to complete the persona. Over the history of classic film and television, dapper heroes have wielded cigars as a declaration of power or a slapstick prop of comedy. Sometimes even both.

Heaven forbid we break from tradition. This is our master-list of silver-screen aficionados.

Man With No Name-The Good the Bad and the Ugly

Clint Eastwood characters are iconic for their everyman hero essence. They ride into town at the eleventh hour bringing cowboy logic and justice to even the most god-forsaken Western towns.

In many Eastwood movies, cigars are smoked on screen. They are also part of the backdrop.

In The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, No-Name actually smoked a cigarillo. Probably one of the hand-rolled variety, although the blend is not exactly clear (wild tobacco for all we know). Cigarillos are usually classified as cigars and not cigarettes because they are wrapped in leaf wrapper like a cigar. 

Cigar culture is a central part of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. There are Parejos present in this movie, but they also search for Figurados as part of the characterization.  

Figurados are identified by different “figures” in their rolling shape. Cones, widebodies, and more creative forms meet this criterion.

The movie’s character Tuco should get a mention here as well. He spent iconic screen time searching for a “usable” cigar.  

Alan “Dutch” Schaefer in The Predator

A Vietnam veteran turned alien-wars fighter, Dutch took on that role with undying style.

The original Dutch was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, a real-life cigar aficionado.

The Wolverine  

Marvel Comics James Howlett “Logan” has featured an iconic cigar love since his creation. While he won’t be allowed to feature with his iconic cigar in the printed comics anymore, his character has been immortalized by the film versions of X-Men.

The on-screen Wolverine, portrayed by Hugh Jackman, has many legacy moments focusing his iconic cigar. Some of which include dousing a cigar in his self-healing palm and lightning up from the flames of a wasted battlefield.

Jackman’s Wolverine smoked Cohibas of several form varieties. These come in all sizes including the Hollywood favored Parejo.

Tony Montana, Scarface

Al Pacino has a storied career playing mobsters and gunslinging characters. Scarface features the Cuban refugee, Tony Montana, in a race to the top of his mob game. It ends badly, but we have a legendary cinematic experience watching it unfold.

In Scarface, Tony Montana smokes classic Parejos, which are defined by the long, cylindrical and dark shape.

The Psycho of American Psycho_Partick Bateman

Hollywood makes a point of adding menace and poise in the same shot to classic villain types. Even if those villains are debut in dark comedy films as satirical archetypes of cruelty and the ridiculous.

We see a lot of this with Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. About the business of a killing spree,  the Psycho smokes a Parejo over a body he has just dropped. Bateman takes his profession with an ultra sense of the serious. After all, the murder of homeless guys spree was inspired in a vanity fit over his work rival’s business card.

Independence Day, Steve Hiller

Steve Hiller didn’t ask for the alien-battling life. It just found him one day and threw him head over heels into an epic battle for planet Earth that was also one of the highest grossing films of 90s box offices. After having just about enough of it from the alien infestation, Hiller decides to stop for a smoke.

He sports a Parejo in that scene. The blend-type isn’t entirely clear, but we have an idea. In 98, Baltimore Sun posted this article condemning Hollywood tobacco use. They cited a pitch of Cuesta Rey cigars from J.C. Newman as the blend supplied to Independence Day’s production team. The brand identifiers were taken out of the shot to avoid the same kind of backlash that eventually happened anyway.

Jeff Goldblum’s genius character touted a victory smoke all the same. If one thing can be said about the alien-battling cast of  Independence Day, they have a refined taste in smokes.

James Bond

Agent 007 could have blown his super-spy cover just by his cigar enthusiasm. Throughout the films, some of his special devices take on cigar themes. A breathing tube in the shape of a cigar canister is gifted him for a special mission in one of the titles. It serves as a comedic gesture throughout.

Finally, there comes that moment where the all-time spy is finally about to take his smoke break. He’d waited in earnest for that Romeo y Julieta Churchill, a blend of Cuban that doesn’t require a great deal of aging to be at its best.

Tony Soprano-The Sopranos

This was actually an HBO show and not a Hollywood film. We still would be remiss to leave out the legend of Tony Soprano. The patriarch of the series’ infamous mob dynasty was a trendsetter throughout the shows run for a plethora of premium cigars and blends.

Tony Soprano left such an enduring impact on cigar enthusiasm that the premium brands released special flavors in his honor.

John “Hannibal” Smith, The A-Team

The original Hannibal from the A-Team TV series was featured frequently with his choice cigar. Portrayed by George Peppard, the team-leader was a trope of confidence and class.

The Reboot film in 2010 features a Hannibal who smokes hand-rolled cigars. The team-leader who loved it when a plan came together, Hannibal was portrayed by Liam Neeson in the reboot. Touting the full-swing of genius, Hannibal breaks out of prison through a crematorium, tells a classic “Devil walks into this bar” joke, and completes terror-fighting feats of daring with his bizarre but brilliant team of renegade career soldiers.

Xenia Onatopp

The femme fatale from the James Bond’s universe features in GoldenEye. This Russian villainess crushed a man to death between her thighs. Homicidal and crafty, she drags Bond over a game of cards in their first scene together.

 Vicious though she is, Xenia has an excellent choice of personal passions_ cigars. She is featured smoking her iconic cigar in the scene she meets James Bond and all throughout the film.