Director/Actor Combos

Basically, name a director/actor duo that’s worked together multiple times—you know, a director's protege or their ultimate muse.

My top picks:
The GOAT combo Scorsese/De Niro (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas)
Leone/Eastwood (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly)
Herzog/Kinski (Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo, My Best Friend's Wife, Nosferatu the Vampyre)
Bergman/Ullmann (Persona, Scenes From A Marriage, The Serpent's Egg)
Wong Kar-Wai/Tony Leung (Chungking Express, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love)
Lynch/Dern (Wild at Heart, Blue Velvet, Inland Empire)

Wes Anderson/Bill Murray
Paul Thomas Anderson/John C. Reilly
John Carpenter/Kurt Russell
Tarantino/Thurman/Samuel L. Jackson
de Palma/Lithgow
John Woo/Chow Yun-Fat
....

This is an intriguing topic—let me toss a few more pairings into the ring:

Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale/Michael Caine
Martin Scorsese/Leonardo DiCaprio
Woody Allen/Scarlett Johansson
Tony Scott/Denzel Washington
Tim Burton/Johnny Depp

Enzo G. Castellari and Franco Nero... I recall Nero mentioning they tackled about ten films together (at least the ones on my radar: High Crime, Street Law, The Shark Hunter, Keoma, and Day of the Cobra)

Takeshi Kitano, acting as both director and actor: for the most part, he's just his own muse, isn't he?🙂

^ Clint Eastwood/Clint Eastwood 😁

Also:
Siegel/Eastwood
Hitchcock/Stewart
Hitchcock/Grant
Thompson/Bronson
Winner/Bronson
Burton/Keaton
Burton/Bonham Carter
Firstenberg/Dudikoff 😁

A few pairings immediately come to mind:

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp
Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter
Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman
Pedro Almodóvar and Penélope Cruz

This thread's actually picking up some steam🙂

Friedkin/Scheider (The French Connection, Sorcerer)
Peckinpah/Oates (The Wild Bunch, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia)
Arthur Penn/Hackman (Bonnie & Clyde, Night Moves)
Francis Ford Coppola/Cazale (The Godfather I & II, The Conversation)

Greengrass/Damon (Bourne 2, Bourne 3, Green Zone)

Lumet/Connery
Sammo Hung/Jackie Chan
Sammo Hung/Yuen Biao
Woody Allen/Woody Allen 😁

The Coen brothers and Frances McDormand—she’s practically a staple in almost all of their films.

Neil Jordan and Stephen Rea

I was originally thinking about Buscemi for Coen, totally blanked on Frances here too

And for the Lumet legend—besides Connery, Al Pacino is a must since he directed two of his absolute best flicks

Denzel’s career, though? That really peaked with Tony Scott and James Mangold

Kassovitz/Cassell (La Haine, Crimson Rivers)

Ferrara/Walken

Nichols/Shannon

David Lynch and Kyle MacLachlan (Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, Dune)

Godfrey Ho and Richard Harrison — If you go by what Wikipedia claims, Harrison showed up in about 19 of those recycled ninja spectacles directed by Godfrey Ho. I’m not entirely sure if this fits the thread's logic, though. Word is, Ho would only actually film scenes with Harrison twice, then just chop and stitch the footage together into 19 different movies without him ever knowing. Is that why his character always goes by "Gordon" in these things? 😁

Jess Franco and Klaus Kinski — *Count Dracula*, *Jack the Ripper*, *Venus in Furs*, *Marquis de Sade: Justine*

Edit: I realized I completely forgot to mention my absolute favorite pairing: Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune

Casey Cox2 said:Basically, name a director/actor duo that’s worked together multiple times—you know, a director's protege or their ultimate muse.

My top picks:
The GOAT combo Scorsese/De Niro (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas)
Leone/Eastwood (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly)
Herzog/Kinski (Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo, My Best Friend's Wife, Nosferatu the Vampyre)
Bergman/Ullmann (Persona, Scenes From A Marriage, The Serpent's Egg)
Wong Kar-Wai/Tony Leung (Chungking Express, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love)
Lynch/Dern (Wild at Heart, Blue Velvet, Inland Empire)

Wes Anderson/Bill Murray
Paul Thomas Anderson/John C. Reilly
John Carpenter/Kurt Russell
Tarantino/Thurman/Samuel L. Jackson
de Palma/Lithgow
John Woo/Chow Yun-Fat
....

actually, if we’re talking about chemistry, it goes even deeper than Reilly... you have to look at the whole P.T. Anderson / Philip Seymour Hoffman dynamic—I mean, think about movies like *Hard Eight*, *Boogie Nights*, *Magnolia*, *Punch-Drunk Love*, or *The Master*

Then you've got Lars von Trier paired up with Stellan Skarsgård, like in *Breaking the Waves*, *Dogville*, or *Melancholia*...

Joel Schumacher & Kiefer Sutherland (The Lost Boys, Flatliners, A Time To Kill, Phone Booth, Twelve)

Richard Donner & Mel Gibson (Lethal Weapon 1-4, Maverick, Conspiracy Theory)

Peter Weir & Mel Gibson (Gallipoli, The Year of Living Dangerously)

Owe Boll & Michael Pare 😁 (Lord knows how many movies they did together)

Walter Hill & Nick Nolte (48 Hours 1-2, Extreme Prejudice)

Tony Scoot & James Gandolfini (The Last Boy Scout, True Romance, Crimson Tide, Pelham 123)

frozenheron7 said:The Coen brothers and Frances McDormand—she’s practically a staple in almost all of their films.

She's also married to Joel Coen, for what it's worth.🙂

Personally, I can think of one recent one that actually has some legs: Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive starring Ryan Gosling.

Elia Kazan and Marlon Brando:
A Streetcar Named Desire, Viva Zapata!, and On the Waterfront

Martin Ritt and Paul Newman:
The Long, Hot Summer, Paris Blues, Hud, The Outrage, and Hombre

Robert Aldrich and Bette Davis:
Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Luke and Barbara Nolan.

Kevin Kern said:She's also married to Joel Coen, for what it's worth.🙂

Personally, I can think of one recent one that actually has some legs: Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive starring Ryan Gosling.

Well, look at that—I had no idea.🙂

That reminds me of another one:
Luc Besson and Jean Reno

And then you have that director-composer duo:
Luc Besson and Eric Serra

northerncrane4 said:Luke and Barbara Nolan.

Lukas Nola/Barbara Nola/Filip Nola

😁

Judd Apatow/Seth Rogen, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd