If movie stars are what sells movies, movies might be in trouble. The coverage of celebrities not just in the tabloids but in the mainstream media and the unregulated online universe has now become so relentless that any actor who steps out of line in public runs the risk of seriously hurting the movies they star in.

Take Christian Bale, the star of the expensive sci-fi sequel Terminator Salvation due out this May. His on-set tantrum from last year's shoot became a major news story when it broke last month, inspiring merciless lampooning and even prompting online remixes of the tirade.

Damage control went into action almost immediately as the actor called a Los Angeles radio station to make amends, but the impact on the film's performance has yet to be measured. And there is no Batsuit or starry supporting cast to offset the focus: this is actually the first blockbuster Bale has carried on his own shoulders.

You can no longer claim that all publicity is good publicity. Russell Crowe's phone-throwing incident arguably killed Cinderella Man at the box office; Tom Cruise's religious proselytising has done untold harm to his once glittering box-office star; and Mel Gibson has not attempted to headline a major picture since his arrest for drunk driving. This year's Edge Of Darkness will be the test of Gibson's post 'Sugartits' box-office mettle.

But while the obsessive media scavenging that now surrounds these actors wherever they go and whatever they do - must we see another snapshot of Reese Witherspoon or Renee Zellweger sipping coffee in Starbucks' - may be considered as coming with the territory of fame, it has a dark flipside.

The tragedies that struck John Travolta earlier this year and Liam Neeson and the Redgrave family last week received similar unremitting coverage. One Los Angeles website called The Wrap keenly announced in its banner headline last Tuesday that Natasha Richardson was 'brain-dead' more than a day before the official announcement of her death. There is evidently no line too crude to cross in the desperation to break celebrity news.

Both Travolta and Neeson have handled their awful losses with supreme dignity, yet who would envy them their next press interviews or the rounds of promotion that come with their next film releases' Their every move throughout the tragedies that befell them was scrutinised to the point that the public was virtually an onlooker to their pain, having water-cooler discussions about their bereavements as if chatting about who shot JR.

And therein lies the problem for today's big screen actors. The success their talent generates is being undermined by the media and public fixation with their offscreen lives. Nobody is denying that celebrity gossip sells magazines or newspapers or draws eyeballs to websites, but does it help to sell movies' Probably not.

Twelve years ago, it was a foregone conclusion in Hollywood circles that audiences would reject heterosexual romantic comedy Six Days, Seven Nights because its lead actress Anne Heche was engaged in a well-publicised offscreen gay romance with Ellen DeGeneres at the time the film opened.

Nothing has changed since then. The film-going public still requires some degree of mystery in its screen icons to keep the illusion alive. They were happy to believe that Rock Hudson was a straight man playing straight men; similarly, they couldn't believe Heche, whom they believed was gay, playing straight.

But how can audiences today sustain that illusion when we are exposed - willingly or not - to the banalities of our stars' private lives, their religious beliefs, their coffee preferences and even recordings of their workplace tantrums' It's a struggle for anyone to accept a big movie star in character these days feeling we know their offscreen baggage so well.

Some of 2009's biggest titles - Watchmen, Star Trek, Avatar - have avoided hiring big-name stars, relying on concept over above-the-line talent. Studios do not want to commit two years and $150m or more to a film, only to have their investment sabotaged midway through the process by the latest media ignominy surrounding its star. And frankly, who can blame them'

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