A superstar is someone who has great popular appeal and is widely known, prominent, or successful in their field. Celebrities referred to as "superstars" may include individuals who work as actors, musicians, athletes, and other media-based professions.

The origin of the term in the context of celebrity is uncertain, but a similar expression is attested in John Nyren's 1832 cricket book The Cricketers of My Time. Nyren described the 18th-century cricketer John Small as "a star of the first magnitude". The earliest use of the term "superstar" has been credited to Frank Patrick in reference to the ice hockey players on his Vancouver Millionaires teams of the 1910s and 1920s, specifically Cyclone Taylor. In the June 1977 edition of Interview magazine, pop artist Andy Warhol was asked by editor Glenn O'Brien who invented the word "superstar". Warhol, known for popularizing the term, responded, "I think it was Jack Smith." O'Brien then asked, "And who were the first superstars?" Warhol responded, "They were all Jack Smith's stars." The term received widespread and commonplace use from the title of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, in particular the 1970 concept album of the musical and the eponymous hit song. "Super Star" is also the name of a hugely successful rose which Harry Wheatcroft introduced and named in 1960.

By 1909, silent film companies began promoting "picture personalities" by releasing stories about actors to fan magazines and newspapers, as part of a strategy to build "brand loyalty" for their company's actors and films. By the 1920s, Hollywood film company promoters had developed a "massive industrial enterprise" that "peddled a new intangible—fame". Hollywood "image makers" and promotional agents planted rumours, selectively released real or fictitious information to the press, and used other "gimmicks" to create public personas for actors. They then "worked [to] reinforce that persona [and] manage the publicity". Publicists thus "created" the "enduring images" and public perceptions of screen legends such as Rock Hudson, Marilyn Monroe, and Grace Kelly. The development of this "star system" made fame "something that could be fabricated purposely, by the masters of the new 'machinery of glory'".

In 1976, Mattel produced a "Superstar" variation of its Barbie doll. According to Sofia Johansson, the "canonical texts on stardom" include articles by Boorstin (1971), Alberoni (1972), and Dyer (1979) that examined the "representations of stars and on aspects of the Hollywood star system". Johansson notes that "more recent analyses within media and cultural studies (e.g. Gamson 1994; Marshall 1997; Giles 2000; Turner, Marshall and Bonner 2000; Rojek 2001; Turner 2004) have instead dealt with the idea of a pervasive, contemporary, 'celebrity culture'". In an analysis of "celebrity culture", Johansson states that "fame and its constituencies are conceived of as a broader social process, connected to widespread economic, political, technological, and cultural developments".

In the 1980s and 1990s, entertainment publicity tactics became "more subtle and sophisticated", such as using press releases, movie junkets, and community activities. These promotional efforts are targeted and designed using market research "to increase the predictability of success of their media ventures". In some cases, publicity agents may create "provocative advertisements" or make an outrageous public statement to "trigger public controversy and thereby generate 'free' news coverage".

According to Roger Caillois, superstars are created by the interplay between "mass media, free enterprise, and competition". Superstars are produced by a mixture of effort on the part of the superstar and mere chance (due to the many arbitrary factors influencing sports, film releases, etc.) and the superstar usually has "extraordinary natural talent augmented by an even more extraordinary perseverance and drive". However, small and relative differences are of decisive importance for "winning or losing by a hair's breadth". It is here that chance plays a role, with Caillois noting that "a sudden gust of wind at the end of a yachting race can mean the difference between stardom and defeat". He states that the role of chance in superstardom is paradoxical because the west is such a "predominantly meritocratic society" which champions the importance of hard work, competition, activity, and determination.

Caillois states that "[since] only one may be first, [a person may] choose to win indirectly through identification with someone else" and that the triumph of the superstar as the most popular actor or musician is in part due to the actions of "those who worship the hero". He says the public believes that the concept of "the manicurist elected beauty queen, the sales girl entrusted with the heroine's role in a super production, the shopkeeper's daughter winning the Tour de France, and the gas station attendant who basks in the limelight as a champion toreador" represents the possibility from the public's perspective that they too may become wealthy and successful. For example, Levine points out that Lars Ulrich, the drummer for Metallica, was a service station attendant before becoming a wealthy rock star and that Harrison Ford was a cabinet maker before becoming a rich and famous actor.

Caillois calls superstars' huge incomes and accolades "disguised lotteries" and a "special kind of game of chance". For example, the grand prizes for literary competitions "bring fortune and glory to a writer for several years". Caillois notes that a superstar cannot merely be successful at some activity—they must also be richly rewarded. He says that the "material reward of the superstar is a necessary ingredient (for the glory of the star) for the identification of the public with the star, or whether it is the excellence or the private life of the star which is of more importance". He states that superstars' extravagant incomes play an important psychological "compensating mechanism" role for the public. According to Madow, "Fame is a 'relational' phenomenon, something that is conferred by others. A person can, within the limits of his natural talents, make himself strong or swift or learned. But he cannot, in this same sense, make himself famous, any more than he can make himself loved. [...] Fame is often conferred or withheld, just as love is, for reasons and on grounds other than 'merit'. This means that regardless of how strenuously the star may try to 'monitor' and 'shape' it, the media and the public always play a substantial part in the image-making process."