The American Film Institute's AFI 100 Years... series includes AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars ranking their selections for the top 25 male and 25 female greatest screen legends of American film history. On June 15, 1999, a CBS special hosted by Shirley Temple unveiled the list with fifty current actors making the presentations.

AFI defined an "American screen legend" as an actor or a team of actors during the Classical Hollywood cinema era with a significant screen presence in American feature-length (40 min or more) films whose screen debut occurred in or before 1950, or whose screen debut occurred after 1950 but whose death has marked a completed body of work, ie., actors recognized for their contributions to classical Hollywood American cinema.

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