Martin Scorsese is famous for his collaborations with Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, and the first feature-length film with all three, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” has become a critical and commercial success. It’s not unusual for a director to find a “favorite” actor and form a successful relationship. In fact, this practice goes back to the beginning of the industry.
In 1912, pioneering filmmaker D.W. Griffith cast 18-year-old Lillian Gish in his short film “An Unseen Enemy,” and the two worked on more than 40 short and feature-length productions over the next decade. One of the most famous scenes from the silent era is in their film “Way Down East,” in which Gish floats unconscious on an ice floe; she had lifelong nerve damage in several fingers as a result of her performance in that scene.
During the Golden Age of Hollywood, there were quite a few famous collaborations, largely due to the studio system in place at the time. John Ford turned B-movie actor John Wayne into a huge box office star, while Michael Curtiz turned Errol Flynn into a swashbuckling hero. George Cukor directed Katharine Hepburn alongside two of her favorite leading men, Cary Grant and Spencer Tracy.
Romantic relationships have turned into successful professional duos, with directors John Cassavetes and Joel Coen (with brother Ethan Coen) directing their wives Gena Rowland and Frances McDormand, respectively, to acclaimed performances. Lifelong friendships have been forged through collaborative work, most notably with John Huston and Humphrey Bogart, while others splintered over creative and personal differences, most notably with Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, plus Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune.
Tour our photo gallery above of the 30 most famous and influential actor/director collaborations in the history of the industry. Each duo has made a least three films together, with the actor in some of the filmmakers’ most memorable productions.
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