Do non-smoking actors use fake cigarettes when playing a part?
The short answer is yes and no: A wide variety of products can be substituted for tobacco cigarettes if a nonsmoking actor is asked to play a smoker in a film or play. Most of them suffer from certain defects of verisimilitude, however. More importantly, there’s no such thing as a noncarcinogenic smoke. In live theater, it’s easier to fake this sort of thing because we expect the presentation to be stylized to some degree and we’re more forgiving if something is not strictly realistic. Also, the audience tends to be farther away from the performer, so we don’t get as clear a view of the prop. Sometimes faking it is as easy as using a real cigarette but not lighting it. For whatever reason, we accept an unlit cigarette on stage in much the same way we know but don’t care that the fancy crystal decanter is actually full of iced tea instead of bourbon. Alternatively, property houses and joke shops offer fake cigarettes that can be filled with a light powder; the actor either blows gently
