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WASHINGTON — Movies and cigarettes have long gone together like Bogey and Bacall, but after years of pressure from advocacy groups, films will now get tougher ratings if their characters light up.

The Motion Picture Association of America announced Thursday that smoking will be considered when movies are rated and that "depictions that glamorize smoking or movies that feature pervasive smoking outside of an historic or other mitigating context may receive a higher rating."

Smoking will become a factor in decisions by the Classification and Rating Administration, along with violence, language, nudity, drug abuse and other elements.

"There is broad awareness of smoking as a unique public health concern due to nicotine's highly addictive nature, and no parent wants their child to take up the habit," MPAA chief executive Dan Glickman said. "The appropriate response of the rating system is to give more information to parents on this issue."

But the MPAA resisted calls by some anti-smoking advocacy groups to give any film with smoking a mandatory "R" rating, meaning children younger than 17 would not be allowed to see it without a parent or guardian. Glickman said such a move would be unnecessary.

According to a review by the ratings board, the percentage of movies with "even a fleeting glimpse of smoking" dropped from 60 percent in July 2004 to 52 percent in July 2006, he said. Of the movies with smoking, three-quarters received an R rating anyway for other adult themes.

Glickman noted that last year's "The Devil Wears Prada" featured no smoking, and that Superman repeatedly blows out Lois Lane's cigarette in "Superman Returns." Both films, released last year, were rated PG-13.

Films whose ratings are affected by smoking will include explanations, such as "glamorized smoking" or "pervasive smoking." The Classification and Rating Administration, a group of 10 to 13 parents whose chairman is appointed by the MPAA, previously had taken smoking into account only when it involved children younger than 18.

Kori Titus, spokeswoman for Breathe California, which opposes film images of tobacco use that might encourage young people to start smoking, said film raters should be as tough on smoking as they are on bad language to minimize the effects of on-screen smoking on children, including her own daughter.

"I don't want her using that language, but last time I checked, she's probably not going to die from that," Titus said. "If she starts smoking from these images she sees in movies, chances are she's probably going to die early from that."

Pressure had been building on Hollywood to do something about smoking in movies, which scientific studies have shown make children more likely to try cigarettes. This month, 32 state attorneys general publicly called for the MPAA to give movies containing smoking an R rating unless they reflect the dangers of the habit or portray a historical figure.

If rated today, a film such as 2005's "Good Night, and Good Luck," about chain-smoking newsman Edward R. Murrow, would have carried a "pervasive smoking" tag but probably would have retained its PG rating because of its historical context, said Joan Graves, who heads the ratings board.

The attorneys general based their call on recommendations from the Harvard School of Public Health. Glickman had asked the school last fall to study the effect of smoking in movies. Their findings, presented to the MPAA in February, were that urgent action was needed.

Research published this month by the Dartmouth Medical School found that 74 percent of 534 recent box-office hit movies contained smoking. Many of the movies were rated PG-13. In a study of German teenagers, researchers found those who had seen the most smoking in movies — usually major Hollywood films — were nearly twice as likely to have tried cigarettes as those who saw the least amount of movie smoking.

Those findings mirrored a 2003 U.S. study by Dartmouth that seeing smoking in movies nearly tripled the risk that children ages 10 to 14 would try cigarettes.

Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that after decades of decline, smoking in movies "increased rapidly" in the late 1990s and in 2002 was at the same level as in 1950. It cited increases in movie smoking for the leveling out of cigarette use among high school students from 2003 to 2005 after several years of significant decreases.

Smoking has been a staple in movies, from film noir of the 1940s through current blockbusters, such as "Spider-Man 3," which features the cigar-puffing newspaper editor J. Jonah Jameson. Some of Hollywood's most iconic images feature smoking, from the cigarette between James Dean's fingers in ads for "Rebel Without a Cause" to the one on the end of Audrey Hepburn's holder in "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

As smoking has declined in popularity, advocacy groups say it has continued to appear in movies.