Hollywood Walk of Fame

Introduction

The Hollywood Walk of Fame is Los Angeles's best-known landmark, but it is not a building - it is 2.1 kilometres (1.3 miles) of public sidewalk running along 15 blocks of Hollywood Boulevard from Gower Street to La Brea Avenue, plus three blocks of Vine Street. Embedded in the pavement are more than 2,800 coral-pink five-pointed terrazzo-and-brass stars, each about 0.9 metres across with 5 cm brass letters and a 15 cm brass emblem below naming the honoree's category. The six categories are motion pictures, television, recording, radio, live performance and sports, with a seventh special category, Awards of Excellence, for organisations and corporations; those entries use a different font and are set into walls rather than the pavement. Stars were first unveiled in 1958 and permanently installed in 1960, the earliest eight including Olive Borden, Ronald Colman and Burt Lancaster. New stars are now added almost monthly - Molly Shannon took the 2,850th in June 2026. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce selects honorees, and each inductee pays for their own star, which is why the count keeps rising. The core stretch holds three landmarks: the TCL Chinese Theatre, opened 1927 and clad in Chinese palace styling, whose forecourt holds about 200 celebrity handprints in cement starting in 1927 after Norma Talmadge stepped into wet concrete during construction; the 3,300-seat Dolby Theatre, opened 2001 and home of the Academy Awards; and the Ovation Hollywood complex that contains them. Note you cannot properly see the Hollywood Sign from the boulevard itself - it sits about 3 km north in the Santa Monica Mountains, so aim for Griffith Observatory or the park trails instead.

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