Electronic cigarette companies are taking a page out of big tobacco's old playbook.

Critics say they're buying their way into Hollywood, but as CBS News correspondent Vinita Nair reports, the product placement is igniting controversy.

For decades, big tobacco co-starred alongside Hollywood's leading names. Tough guy Clint Eastwood, rebel James Dean and classic beauty Audrey Hepdurn were often seen with a cigarette in hand.

But now a new character is lighting up the silver screen.

Johnny Depp puffed on an e-cigarette in the 2010 film "The Tourist," and Dennis Quaid took a drag in "Beneath The Darkness."

Early next year, the e-cig will once again be front and center in the film Cymbeline; a modern prop for a modern take on one of Shakespeare's classics.

It's the result of a six-figure deal with Canadian-based e-cig brand Smokestik.

Bill Marangos is the company's CEO.

"By getting out in the mainstream media, into movies, integrating it, I think what we're -- as an industry -- trying to show people is that there is a different way and it's an acceptable way to smoke," Marangos said.

Smoking never left the movies, but tobacco companies haven't been able to pay for product placement in nearly 20 years, ever since a 1998 settlement agreement banned the practice.

Those rules don't apply to e-cigs, something anti-smoking advocates want to change.

"The manner in which e-cigarettes are being marketed in their new association with Hollywood is deeply disturbing," said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. "What is happening is that e-cigarettes are re-glamorizing smoking to our nation's youth."

Since emerging in 2005, the e-cigarette industry has exploded into an estimated $3 billion global business with more than 450 brands.

But as more of the devices make their way onto the big screen, advertising insiders warn tighter regulations may be looming.

"I think that right now we're going to have this period where we see almost a land rush to try to get their messages out there before governments, local and federal, come in and really kind of crack down on them," said Michael Sebastian, reporter for Ad Age.

E-cigs are still very controversial. Proponents claim they're healthier than traditional cigarettes because they don't contain tobacco, but last month the World Heath Organization called for some of the toughest measures yet, urging the cigarettes be banned in public places.