Central Celebrities

A small number of celebrities can be considered 'global', in that their fame has spread across the world, even across linguistic and cultural boundaries. These celebrities are often prominent political figures, actors, globally successful artists, musicians and sports stars.

The rise of international celebrities in acting and popular music is due in large part to the massive scope and scale of the media industries, enabling celebrities to be viewed more often and in more places. The reach of entertainment products is further extended by large-scale illegal copying of movies and music, which makes inexpensive pirated versions of DVDs and CDs available throughout even less economically developed countries.

Regional or cultural celebrities

Each culture and region has its own independent celebrity system, with a hierarchy of popular film, television, and sports stars. Celebrities who are very popular might be unknown abroad, except with culturally-related groups, such as within a diaspora. In some cases, a country-level celebrity might command some attention outside their native country, but not to the degree that they can be considered a global celebrity. For example, singer Lara Fabian is widely-known in the French-speaking world, but only had a couple of Billboard hits in the U.S., whereas singer Celine Dion is well-known in both communities.

Subnational entities or regions, or cultural communities (linguistic, ethnic, religious) also have their own 'celebrity systems', especially in linguistically or culturally-distinct regions such as Quebec (a French-speaking province in Canada) and Wales (a constituent country of the UK). Regional radio personalities, newscasters, politicians or community leaders can be considered as local or regional celebrities.

A local celebrity can be more of a household name than a national celebrity and may often experience the same type of attention from the public as a national celebrity albeit in the confines of their particular region. For example, while journalist Lin Sue Cooney is a well known television reporter in Arizona, she is little known outside the Southwestern US.

Another example of celebrity can be merely cultural or unique to a particular diaspora. Tehran Ghasri has a highly celebrated Iranian television program accessible by Iranian satellite. His program is mostly in Persian restricting by nature most of his viewers to be of Iranian, Afghan, Turkish, Armenian, Assyrian or Kurdish descent. His celebrity is acclaimed in the diaspora of Persian speaking people spread through out the world, including the United States, Canada, Europe and Iran. While visibility of the show is world-wide understanding is limited to Persian speaking people. Tehran Ghasri's recognition is mainly cultural or in this case restricted to those of a particular lingual identity. Therefore while his celebrity maybe deemed world-wide geographically it only reflects a small fraction of people.