Back in Hollywood's glamour days, celebrity smoking was all the rage. But today's stars, especially the femme fatales, are finding out that it's positively vulgar to puff in public.

Nicole Kidman's very public cigarette smoking during a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival for her new movie "Dogville" has anti-smokers up in arms.

Reports say that at a media briefing for the film last week, Kidman bummed a cigarette from co-star, Stellan Skarsgard. Director Lars von Trier publicly and immediately chided her. "Oh, Nicole, don't do that, you promised," von Trier reportedly said, but Kidman continued to smoke.

Nowhere has Kidman's public display of smoking been more discussed than in her homeland Australian newspapers.

The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) Chief Executive Anne Jones who said, "Kidman was perpetuating the image that smoking was associated with glamour, independence and success." Jones said that Kidman "does have a right to smoke," but was discouraged that Kidman's public smoking was televised allowing "millions of people around the world" to believe smoking is glamorous and equated with success, and that it offered free advertisement to the tobacco industry.

Jones said she was planning to write to Kidman's publicist, to address the fact that Kidman was a role model to millions of young women.

Meanwhile, the fire still smolders over photos that appeared on the Internet of actress Catherine Zeta-Jones who was photographed topless, pregnant and smoking a cigarette during a resort stay in Mexico.

Zeta-Jones and her husband, Michael Douglas, have demanded that the photo published on some radio station Web sites be removed. You can read the copy of the letter demanding the removal of the photo.

While the photo can be found on some sites by doing a search, most Web sites, obviously trying to avoid legal action, removed the photo.

Meanwhile, singer and role model Britney Spears was outed for her smoking by the New York press after being seen leaving a club with a cigarette in hand.

"Alongside bodyguards and inside a trashy outfit, Britney Spears the felon at Suede. Puffing and inhaling and exhaling and smoking and flicking and lighting up and stubbing out and breaking the law, she was. This kind of criminal action must cease and stop!" reported gossip columnist Cindy Adams in the May 19 edition of the New York Post.

Cigarettes And Coffee

Jim Carrey's new film "Bruce Almighty" may boost the sagging career of Juan Valdez.

The mustachioed Colombian coffee grower and his faithful mule are reentering the spotlight thanks to a specific request by Carrey to appear in the movie "Bruce Almighty."

During the filming, Carrey had an idea for a joke revolving around the Colombian coffee icon. Calls were made to track him down on his coffee farm in the remote Colombian mountains and he was taken to Hollywood.

You remember Valdez? He's been on television for 30 years in commercials for 100 percent Colombian coffee, but this is the first time he's appeared in a major motion picture.

Valdez may be jumping on the reality television mule wagon. He's in the spotlight in a new advertising campaign to promote his coffee and to help drive viewers to "Almighty."

Drive My Car

Speaking of driving, is it me or are a crop of new action movies helping automakers sell their cars?

"The Italian Job" makes you a) want to look like Charlize Theron (if you're a woman) and b) make you want to go out and buy a Mini Cooper so you can pretend to look like Theron in a cool car.

Meanwhile, the new crop of Cadillacs gets 14 minutes of movie time in "The Matrix Reloaded."

Cadillac Escalade EXTs and CTSs look like hot, young automobiles and automakers obviously are hoping with this plug in one of the hottest summer action flicks that moviegoers won't think of Cadillacs as Grandpa's car.

You can't accuse "The Matrix Reloaded" directors of holding anything back. Cadillacs in this film get punctured with bullet holes, sideswiped and rolled over.

Producer Joel Silver insisted on Cadillacs for the scene.

"The look of the car, the color of the car, the black and the silver and the whole idea of these two really impressive characters, they really work in the movie as co-stars," Silver said.

Amazingly, when filming started, the vehicles didn't even exist yet.

David Schiavone at Cadillac took the request for about a dozen Escalade EXTs and a dozen more CTS's and he needed to raid GM's Detroit design studios.

"We were still over a year away from production so what we did with the EXT is, we got all of the Escalade prototype vehicles we could find and all the Chevy Avalanche prototype vehicles we could find and literally cut and pasted those vehicles together," Schiavone said.

Look for some cool car stuff coming up in the new movie "2 Fast 2 Furious." There's a whole new lineup of hot cars, with the Toyota Supra still in command, plus producers have brought on a whole new line of cars to the show including the Nissan Skyline, the Honda S2000, the Mazda RX7, and the Mitsubishi Eclipse Spider.

The movie arrives in theaters June 6.

Wahlberg's Gonna Be A Daddy

Mark Wahlberg, whose upcoming film "The Italian Job" is getting plenty of press, will be a father this summer. Wahlberg, who turns 32 on June 5, and girlfriend-model Rhea Durham, are expecting a daughter, according to reports.

Walhberg, who met Durham through a mutual friend, told People magazine the two have no plans to marry.

"We don't want to throw a big party for everyone else," Wahlberg told People.

Michelle Solomon's gossip column, Celebrity Chatter, usually appears each Monday. E-mail us with questions or comments. Michelle Solomon@Celebrity Chatter.