Last year Hollywood sighed with relief after a potentially disastrous strike by actors was averted. Judging by the results from this holiday movie season, the moguls shouldn't have been so worried: big stars, once the industry's most dependable insurance policy, carried little clout at the box office. Major holiday releases with expensive stars like Jim Carrey (The Majestic) and Meg Ryan (Kate & Leopold) bombed, and even Tom Cruise couldn't turn Vanilla Sky into a blockbuster. Meanwhile, star-free projects like Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings set box-office records. "With many of 2001's big hits, the draw was not...
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