1. GEORGE CLOONEY (From his star-making turns in The Perfect Storm and O Brother, Where Art Thou in 2000, to cementing his leading man status in 2001's Ocean's Eleven, to his political activism,...

2. CLINT EASTWOOD (What a decade it has been for Eastwood, with Mystic River (2003), the overappreciated Million Dollar Baby (2004), the underappreciated Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), Changeling/Gran Torino (2008), and Invictus this fall--he's putting directors half his age to shame with the quality and quantity of his films)

4. KANYE WEST (Whether he's ruling the charts or having one of his "George Bush doesn't care about black people" or Taylor Swift rants, West is arguably the biggest rapper and overall music artist this decade)

...MARTIN SCORSESE (The Aviator, The Departed), who hasn't enjoyed this kind of success since he similarly had Robert De Niro in all his movies (Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy)

7. J.J. ABRAMS (Conquered TV as executive producer for "Alias," a little show called "Lost," and another little show called "Six Degrees" (now, I'm not being sarcastic), and he also very successfully crossed over to movies as a big producer/director, working on Mission: Impossible III, Star Trek, and Cloverfield)

9. CHRISTIAN BALE & RUSSELL CROWE (The 3:10 to Yuma co-stars have become the decade's action and intense dramatic stars (sometimes too intense, though, with on-set tantrums and phone-throwing))

11. COLDPLAY & U2 (Is Coldplay the new U2? Either way, these two UK groups are neck-in-neck in the fight of being called the biggest rock act of the decade)

13. MEL GIBSON (Some might say he had a horrible decade, with his DUI and anti-Semitic accusations, but look at how successful his star turns (What Women Want, Chicken Run, Signs) and directorial efforts (The Passion of the Christ, Apocalypto) have been)

15. MERYL STREEP (Baldwin's It's Complicated co-star, Streep, has seen a career rejuvenation like no other star this decade, with an Oscar/Golden Globe nomination for pretty much everything she's done (Adaptation, The Hours, The Manchurian Candidate, The Devil Wears Prada, Doubt, and, surely, this year's Julie & Julia))

17. MATT DAMON (Damon has proven that he can do action (the Bourne movies), comedy (The Informant, Stuck on You, Eurotrip, Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, "Entourage"), drama (The Departed, The Good Shepherd, Invictus), and everything in between (the Ocean's movies))

19. JESSICA BIEL & JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE (The young power-couple of the decade, with Biel now being noticed for her potential acting chops (The Illusionist, Home of the Brave) and Timberlake breaking out of the boy band bubble and starting a very successful solo music and acting career)

21. BEYONCE KNOWLES & JAY-Z (The decade's biggest star of R&B and the biggest star of rap together; she's sang and starred in hit after hit, and he's cranked out a hit album almost every year this decade, even when he claimed to be retiring in between)

23. SEAN PENN (A double Best Actor Oscar winner this decade for Mystic River and Milk, with great performances in between in such films as I Am Sam, 21 Grams, and The Assassination of Richard Nixon)

25. QUENTIN TARANTINO (As great a decade as Tarantino had in the 90s with Reservoir Dogs, Natural Born Killers, From Dusk Till Dawn, and Pulp Fiction, I feel like the 2000s has seen him grow into an even better writer/director, with: Kill Bill; his pairing with Robert Rodriguez (Sin City), Eli Roth (Hostel), and Rob Zombie (Devil's Rejects) on Grindhouse; and Inglourious Basterds)

Entertainer with Biggest Career Boost of the Decade: PETER JACKSON (Went from being a small (but not in physical stature) horror director in the 90s, with Dead Alive and The Frighteners, to a huge (but now slim in physical stature) Oscar-winning director, with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, King Kong, his producing of District 9, and this fall's The Lovely Bones)

...which leads me to wonder what has happened to the two biggest entertainers of the 90s, TOM HANKS (still a big star in his own right, but nowhere near the same star he was 10 years ago, now starring in such flops as The Ladykillers and Charlie Wilson's War; The DaVinci Code, despite also being an awful movie, was commercially successful though, but more because of the book than Hanks)...