cigarsAfter years of decline, smoking cigars abruptly returned to popularity in America in the 1990s, with cigars bars and shops springing up even in smaller towns and cities. Some of America''s great male icons of sports and entertainment were quick to pick up the habit, while others had been closet cigar smokers for years.

Jack Nicholson

The three-time Oscar-winning star (1936-) of such films as Easy Rider (1969), Chinatown (1974), The Shining (1980) and Batman (1989) was an avid cigarette smoker in the early 1990s, when he began playing golf. But he found himself chain-smoking to a dangerous extent during intense rounds - up to half a pack per round, reportedly - and so he switched to cigars after the fifth hole. (Though no form of nicotine is "safe," cigars are associated with far less risk of cancer than are cigarettes.) His favorite brand is Montecristo. He has since appeared on many magazine covers with his now-trademark stogie.

Michael Jordan

Often cited as the greatest basketball player of all time, Jordan (1963-) is also a fan of Montecristos cigars, which he was known to smoke on the team bus.

Jordan apparently keeps his smoking of quality cigars under control, given that he remains, even in retirement, a formidably in-shape athlete. The former University of North Carolina star joined the Bulls in 1984, and transformed basketball with his near-superhuman leaping ability; besides his plethora of MVP awards, Olympic gold medals, and more broken records than you''d find on Dick Clark''s basement floor after a drunken rage, he also remains one of the few athletes to maintain a double career with his mid-90s run as a baseball minor leaguer (inspired by his late father''s oft-expressed desire to see his son play professional baseball). Since his third and last retirement in 2003 (from the Washington Wizards), Jordan has continued playing golf in celebrity tournaments; he also owns a motorcycle-racing team.

Francis Ford Coppola

The Godfather director (1939-) learned how to smoke quality cigars from legendary ex-Warner Brothers head Jack Warner, who hired Coppola straight out of film school to helm the music Finian''s Rainbow (1968). Coppola also, eventually, inherited a gold-and-silver cigars cutter from Warner. Their relationship is somewhat ironic, given that it was Coppola, with his friends George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, who helped transform Hollywood during the 1970s, making it (temporarily) more receptive to visionary independent films, such as Coppola''s own The Conversation (1974) and Apocalypse Now (1979), and his friend George Lucas''s THX-1138 (1970) and American Graffiti (1973), both of which Coppola produced. Coppola also likes a little wine with his cigar habit (presumably not at the same time): he owns a California winery.