Last year was a blast! Remember the Oscar Homecoming dance? And everyone dishing about whether Sherry Lansing (No. 12) was going to drop out, and how Ben Affleck (No. 41) and J.Lo (No. 47) hooked up, like, right after she broke up with Cris! So many people had a great year. Sure, Steven Soderbergh (No. 39) didn’t win the science fair with his Solaris project, but how cute was Renée Zellweger (No. 63) in the winter musical? And the freshmen class was way hot. Everyone wanted to get together with Colin Farrell (No. 98) or Kate Hudson (No. 99). Even the adults were cool. Ms. Pascal (No. 2) totally deserved her Teacher of the Year award—her class on spiders rocked!—and Principal Spielberg (No. 1) rules the school better than anyone. But next year could be even more awesome—here at Hollywood High, just about anything is possible.

1. Steven Spielberg
Rank Last Year: 6. Title: The Creator. Career Domestic Box Office: $3.1 billion. 2002 Box Office: $294.4 million. Status Report: CEOs come and go. Studios skyrocket and stumble. But Spielberg is a constant in the Hollywood pantheon: a culture-shaping, blockbuster-making, Oscar-winning, studio-owning icon of cinema. Minority Report and Catch Me if You Can last year became his 11th and 12th movies to cross the $100 million mark, and his DreamWorks raked in $513.7 million from only seven films. Any studio wanting to make a movie with him usually is forced to share it with DreamWorks—and they’re jumping at the chance. Next: Will reteam with Tom Hanks for Terminal, a drama about an immigrant trapped in a New York City airport, then examine The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, with Jim Carrey. Yes, It’s True: Lobbied Jack Nicholson for months to play a dying father in Big Fish. Jack passed. The film is now being directed by Tim Burton, starring Albert Finney.