Celebrity Girl Portrait

English-speaking media commentators and journalists will sometimes refer to celebrities as belonging to the A-List or state that a certain actor belongs to the B-List, the latter being a disparaging context. These informal rankings indicate a placing within a hierarchy. However, due to differing levels of celebrity in different regions, it is difficult to place people within one bracket. A Brazilian actor might be a B-list action film actor in the US, but an A-list star in Portugal. An objective method of placing celebrities from any country into categories from A-List to H-List based on their number of Google hits has been proposed, but this method only works for people with distinctive names, e.g., Jason Mewes, not Kevin Smith.
It is hard to measure fame. Even worldwide celebrities might still be unknown to people in isolated countries like North Korea, to villagers without access to international news media or to people who are simply uninterested in celebrities. Some elements are associated with fame, such as appearing on the cover of Time, being spoofed in Mad, having a wax statue in Madame Tussauds, or receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Certain people are known even to people unfamiliar with the area in which they excelled. Pablo Picasso's style and name are known even to people who are not interested in art; likewise many know that Harry Houdini was an illusionist, Bill Gates an entrepreneur, Albert Einstein a scientist; Mozart and Beethoven classical composers; Luciano Pavarotti an opera singer. Many people around the world know the name and face of the current American president, Barack Obama.