Church starts to look east: behold a star! (5)
I believe the answer is:
celeb
'a star' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'church starts to look east behold' is the wordplay.
'church' becomes 'ce' (abbreviation for Church of England).
'starts to' indicates taking the first letters.
The initial letters of 'look east behold' is 'leb'.
'ce'+'leb'='CELEB'
(Other definitions for celeb that I've seen before include ""Personality"" , "Famous person (colloq.)" , "Big name" , "Famous person (abbr)" , "Famous person (sl.)" .)