python - most efficient code to search for, and replace, given word in a sentence?

Question

I'm working through simple exercises in an online Python course - an exercise called "censor" takes 2 inputs, a sentence and word - then returns the sentence with all instances of the given word replaced by asterisks. The number of asterisks in each replacement equals the number of characters in the original word. For simplicity's sake the exercise assumes no input error checking is needed. My code works but I'm wondering if it can be made more efficient?:

def censor(text, word):
    textList = text.split()
    for index, item in enumerate(textList):
        count = 0
        if item == word:
            for char in word:
                count += 1
            strikeout = "*" * count
            textList[index] = strikeout
            result = ' '.join(textList)
    return result

Answer 1

There is already a function on string objects that does this:

def censor(text,word):
    return text.replace(word, "*"*len(word))