Those Two Actors

"You replace Luke Skywalker with fucking Fred from Scooby-Doo?! Aw shit, Matthew Lillard was in that too. It's like these chuckleheads are joined at the hip!"

— Spoony, Wing Commander Review

This trope is when two actors—or, occasionally, groups of more than two—end up working together over and over for no other reason than because directors think audiences like them. Sometimes, the two are in a Real Life relationship, but that's not the reason why they're cast together; the chemistry that gives them might help, but the essential point is audience appeal.

In Hollywood, this trope was more common in the studio era, when most actors and actresses were under contract to a particular studio, and those studios would match them up together repeatedly if they proved a success. It's still common in Bollywood, where jodi^note "couple" or "pair" is used to describe costars who frequently play lovers onscreen.

This doesn't apply when the actors work together over and over because they're part of a film franchise (like the kids in the Harry Potter movies, for example).

See also Double Acts and Groups, Production Posse and Only So Many Canadian Actors. Unrelated to, but may overlap with, Those Two Guys.

---

Examples:

• Margaret Dumont appeared in eight of the thirteen The Marx Brothers movies as Groucho's 'love interest'/sparring partner, to the point where Groucho called her "the fifth Marx Brother"
• Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell were so charming as a screen couple in the 1927 film 7th Heaven they were eventually paired in 12 movies, including Street Angel and Lucky Star.
• Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were cast as a Beta Couple in Flying Down to Rio, and made such an impression that they starred in eight more movie musicals over the next six years. The Barkleys of Broadway brought them back together once more; Rogers had been trying to put musicals behind her, but Judy Garland was unavailable. While not so much close offscreen (as she put it, "We had fun and it shows. True, we were never bosom buddies off the screen; we were different people with different interests. We were only a couple on film"), both are even interred in the same graveyard.
• Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon were paired up in eight films, including Blossoms in the Dust and 1942's Best Picture winner, Mrs. Miniver.
• Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler appeared together in seven Warner Bros. musicals between 1933 and 1936. In fact, Keeler only appeared in three other feature films, one of them pairing her with then-husband Al Jolson.
• Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy co-starred in eight MGM musicals.
  • Before teaming up with Eddy, MacDonald had previously been paired with Maurice Chevalier (mostly under Ernst Lubitsch's direction) in The Love Parade (1929), One Hour with You (1932), Love Me Tonight (1932), and The Merry Widow (1934).
• Matt Damon and Ben Affleck both appeared in School Ties and then both became stars when they co-wrote and co-starred in Good Will Hunting, then co-starred again in Dogma. They also both appeared in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (cameos) and Damon made cameos in Affleck vehicles Chasing Amy and Jersey Girl. Damon's career eventually eclipsed Affleck's, to the degree that The Onion ran an article entitled "Ben Affleck Hoping Jason Bourne Has Sidekick In Next Movie". Affleck's latter-day career revival as a director with films like The Town and Argo may facilitate another Ben & Matt movie one day.
  • It did facilitate in eventually, The Last Duel and Air, with Affleck also directing the latter.
  • Lampshaded in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back by Affleck
  Jay (Jason Mewes): Do they say who's fuckin' playing us in the movie?
  Holden (Ben Affleck): No, but it's Miramax. So I'm sure it'll be Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. They put those guys in a bunch of movies.
  Jay: Who?
  Holden: You know, those kids from Good Will Hunting?
  Jay: You mean that fuckin' movie with Mork from Ork in it?
  Holden: Yeah, I wasn't a big fan either... but Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms.
  Jay: Word, bitch, Phantoms like a motherfucker.
• During The '70s, in Venezuela, it seemed that Lupita Ferrer and José Bardina starred in Soap Operas as the main couple too often. That was so pervasive that years later a producer decided to reunite them in a soap, despite Bardina having been in retirement for two decades and Ferrer having pursued a successful career abroad.
• British actors tend to work with each other quite a bit. Watch the Harry Potter movies, then watch some other British movies and see how many of the Harry Potter actors appear together in the same movie. It can be all but guaranteed that if a British actor wasn't in a Harry Potter film themselves, they've shared a screen with someone who was — probably several times. This phenomenon has been nicknamed "British Actor Bingo", leading to the common Tumblr wisdom that "Britain has twelve actors, six writers, three locations and ten props."
  • Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson in Sense and Sensibility, Love Actually, Judas Kiss, the Harry Potter movies, A Little Chaos, and The Winter Guest (which Alan directed and made a cameo).
  • Thompson also had this during her marriage with Kenneth Branagh: Henry V (1989), Dead Again, Much Ado About Nothing (1993) and Peter's Friends, as well as the TV series Fortunes of War (which came before their marriage). They both appeared in the Harry Potter series, but not in the same movie: Branagh's lone appearance as Gilderoy Lockhart was in the second film, while Thompson didn't start playing Sybil Trelawney until the third film.
• After appearing together in L.I.E. (2001), Brian Cox and Paul Dano have been in several other films together, including The Good Heart and War and Peace (2016).
• Susan Sarandon and her daughter Eva Amurri Martino have appeared in a few things together mainly as Mother and daughter. They appeared together on an episode of Friends, the 2003 movie The Banger Sisters and currently in NBC's Growing Ivy all as mother and daughter. They both also appeared as the same character in That's My Boy.
• Michael Jeter has often appeared in supporting roles alongside Robin Williams, e.g. The Fisher King, Patch Adams and Jacob the Liar.
• David Spade and Chris Farley appeared in three movies together: Coneheads, Tommy Boy, and Black Sheep (1996). If it weren't for Farley's untimely death, they might have appeared together again in Grown Ups, whose script was put on indefinite hold after Farley's death and later filmed with Kevin James instead.
• Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay were good friends in life and appeared on stage together frequently earlier in their careers. They also appeared together on screen in The Dresser and A Very English Marriage.
• Finney and Michael Gambon appeared together in several films, including Amazing Grace, A Man Of No Importance, and the 1994 film adaptation of The Browning Version.
• Gambon and Tom Hollander appeared together in Wives and Daughters (playing father and son), Gosford Park (playing brothers-in-law) and The Lost Prince (playing father and son again).
• Tim Allen and Spencer Breslin, not counting the two Santa Clause movies, appeared together in The Shaggy Dog and Zoom: Academy for Superheroes.
  • Also Breslin has appeared in a few movies with his sister Abigail Breslin: Raising Helen, The Santa Clause 3, The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement and the upcoming Perfect Sisters.
• Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy were never married, but they were together for decades, and are still remembered as one of Hollywood's most famous couples. Movies they appeared in together include Woman of the Year, State of the Union, Adam's Rib, Pat And Mike, Desk Set and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, in which they play an old married couple.
• Hepburn also costarred with Cary Grant in four films: Sylvia Scarlett, Bringing Up Baby, Holiday, and The Philadelphia Story.
• Speaking of Cary Grant, he and Irene Dunne starred in three films together, two comedies (The Awful Truth and My Favorite Wife) and one drama (Penny Serenade).
  • Dunne was also in three films with Charles Boyer.
• Jordan Chan and Anita Yuen have played a couple in at least 8 Hong Kong films.
• In-universe: America's Sweethearts is centered around a romantically involved movie star couple (played by John Cusack and Catherine Zeta-Jones) that starred in several successful movies before suddenly splitting up, forcing their publicist to maintain the illusion to promote their latest movie.
• Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes, in White Men Can't Jump and then Money Train. Jennifer Lopez stood in for Rosie Perez in the latter.
  • They first appeared together in the Goldie Hawn movie Wildcats (1986) in supporting roles.
• Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson seem to exist solely to appear in movies together. Meet the Parents, Starsky & Hutch, Night at the Museum, Zoolander....
  • This duo is even referenced in Homestuck, which casts them as the titular protagonists of the In-Universe film adaptation of the Defictionalized Webcomic Within A Webcomic Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff.
  • The Other Wiki has a convenient table-thing for the movies these members of the "Frat Pack" have appeared in.
  • Christine Taylor, Stiller's wife, has appeared in a number of things opposite him. Zoolander, DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story, and Arrested Development.
• Not counting the Thin Man series, William Powell and Myrna Loy were in 8 films together. Their first film together wasn't even The Thin Man, it was Manhattan Melodrama. Counting the Thin Man series, they did a whopping 14 films together, more than any other American male and female co-stars.
• Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet appeared together in nine movies from 1941 to 1946, three of which starred Humphrey Bogart. Bogart, Lorre and Greenstreet worked so well together on The Maltese Falcon that Warner Bros. would pair any combination of them or all three together, so sometimes it was Bogart and Lorre (All Through the Night), Bogart and Greenstreet (Across the Pacific, Conflict) and then the aforementioned pairing.
• Jim Hutton and Paula Prentiss did five movies together in the early 1960s. (Prentiss is 5'10" and would have towered over a lot of leading men. Casting her opposite the 6'5" Hutton kept her from having to walk in a trench all the time.)
• Richard Dysart and David Clennon have been cast together in a number of films, most notably Being There and The Thing (1982) (with Dysart, as is often the case, playing medical doctors in both).
• Chinese cinema featuring martial arts in the 1970s would frequently pair real-life Bash Brothers, Mr. Fanservice Ti Lung and Badass in a Nice Suit David Chiang, side-by-side, in several movies including Vengeance! (1970), The Heroic Ones, Duel of the Ironfist, The Deadly Duo, Have Sword, Will Travel, Blood Brothers (1973), The Water Margin, The Anonymous Heroes and at least a dozen other films. As Chinese cinema entered the 80s though, due to a minor rift in dispute over popularity, and a quarrel over a love triangle gone wrong, both actors stopped appearing side-by-side, and while they do appear in the same films, like Shanghai 13 and The Naval Commandos, however they do not appear in the same scene or share any screentime. As time goes on, they gradually made up and went back to becoming friends again, and are happily seen having a drink together with several other martial arts alumni during reunion parties.
• Xu Kai and Bai Lu have been cast as each other's love interests in three different television series, and had been in five series together overall. This is possibly a result of being in the same production company.
• Xiao Zhan and Li Qin have acted together in one film and three television series (Joy Of Life, Battle Through the Heavens, and The Wolf).
• Dilraba Dilmurat and Vin Zhang have acted together in five series so far: V Love, Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms, Pretty Li Hui Zhen, The King's Woman, and The Flame's Daughter.
• Zhao Li Ying and Feng Shao Feng have acted together in one film (The Monkey King 3) and four series (A Husband and Wife, The Girl in Blue, Palace II, and The Story of Minglan). In 2018 they announced their marriage.
• Liang Jie and Xing Zhao Lin have starred together four times: in The Eternal Love and its sequels, and in You Are My Destiny.
• Liu Yi Jun and Ji Chen have acted together three times: in Nirvana in Fire, Lost Love in Times, and The Legend of Xiao Chuo.
• Italian actors Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni appeared together in thirteen films, starting with Too Bad She's Bad (1954), including Marriage Italian Style, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, A Special Day, and finally in English with Prêt-à-Porter (1994).
• The comic duo Massimo Boldi & Christian De Sica had starred in so many movies that the Italian media called their split up a 'divorce' and the fact actually made it into newspaper headlines.
• After Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito did Romancing the Stone and The Jewel of the Nile, which were related, they were all cast together in The War of the Roses, an unrelated movie. Some fans of the two related adventure movies mistook the unrelated black comedy for the third installment of the series.
• Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt created and starred in The Mighty Boosh together, but are such a matched pair that they routinely appear in other things together— Nathan Barley, Garth Marenghis Darkplace, AD/BC:A Rock Opera, films The Bunny and the Bull and Aaaaaaaah!, the short film Sweet, the miniseries Surrealissimo: The Scandalous Success of Salvador Dali, and the 90's sketch show, Unnatural Acts. Such is their chemistry, that in Sweet, their two characters end up as lovers, and in Surrealissimo, they play a pair of co-dependent artists who finish each other's sentences and are nearly always touching. Expect them to be frequently accompanied by Richard Ayoade, Rich Fulcher, and Matt Berry, many of whom also appear in the aforementioned shows and films.
• Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee not only did numerous Hammer Horror films together, but a fair number of non-Hammer British horror films. They remained lifelong friends, a fact Alan Davies lampshaded on QI when he highlighted the surreality of Van Helsing and Dracula being so close. (They also were both in the Star Wars saga, but not in the same movies—by the time Lee appeared in Attack of the Clones, Cushing had been dead for eight years.)
  • Lee appeared in five films with Klaus Kinski - The Devil's Daffodil, Secret of the Red Orchid, Psycho-Circus, Five Golden Dragons and Count Dracula (1970).
• The husband and wife team of Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci have appeared together in the likes of Brotherhood of the Wolf (without sharing any scenes), Irréversible, L Appartement and Dobermann.
• William Gaxton and Victor Moore were already established stars on Broadway in 1931, when they starred in Of Thee I Sing, which began a partnership that lasted for fifteen years. After Of Thee I Sing and its sequel Let 'Em Eat Cake, they starred in the Broadway musicals Anything Goes, Leave It to Me!, Louisiana Purchase, Hollywood Pinafore and Nellie Bly. They also starred with Mae West in the 1943 movie The Heat's On.
• Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes had Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, who proved such a hit as a pair of comical English twits that the pair were cast in pretty much the same roles for numerous other films in the 1940s. They actually played the very same characters in the 1940 (non-Hitchcock) thriller Night Train to Munich.
• Bollywood runs on this trope and have their own name for it, jodi.
  • Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol in Baazigar, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Kabhi Kushi Kabhie Gham, and My Name is Khan.
  • Madhuri Dixit and Anil Kapoor. Most famously in Beta.
  • Govinda and Karisma Kapoor in countless '90s movies such as Raja Babu, Coolie No. 1 and Khuddar.
  • On the buddy pairing side of things, we have Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra in the 70's Sholay, among others), and Saif Ali Khan and Akshay Kumar in the 90's and more recently, Tashan.
• Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter have emerged as the principal couple in Tim Burton's Production Posse, appearing together (though not necessarily cast as a couple) in Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland (2010), Dark Shadows, and The Lone Ranger (2013).
• Portuguese actors José Pedro Gomes and the late António Feio, used to appear together in the two man show Conversa da Treta (Bull-crap Conversations) as Toni & Zezé. After the Live Show, the TV Show and The Movie, the two always seemed to appear together, including in the Portuguese dub of Brother Bear.
• Ally Sheedy and Judd Nelson, more so than any other pair of Brat Packers (The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo's Fire, Blue City).
• Tom Cruise and Emilio Estevez appeared together in The Outsiders, Young Guns and Mission: Impossible (1996).
• Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson both created and started in a number of stage productions, television shows, and movies, including The Comic Strip Presents, The Young Ones, Bottom, The Dangerous Brothers, Filthy Rich & Catflap, and Guest House Paradiso. They also appeared in an episode of Hardwicke House and the Blackadder episode "Private Plane". Mayall even made an appearance in Edmondson's sitcom Snakes and Ladders, while Edmondson appeared in Mayall's special Kevin Turvey: The Man Behind the Green Door.
• Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood appeared in three films together (Kings Go Forth, Sex and the Single Girl, The Great Race) even though they absolutely loathed each other in real life.
• John Cusack and Tim Robbins - although they've made few films in which they share the lead, they often cameo in each other's films.
• John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson - The Contract, 1408, and Cell.
  • Also John Cusack and his sister Joan Cusack have appeared in many movies together.
  • John Cusack also made seven films with Jeremy Piven. And eight with Ned Bellamy. He seems to like doing this.
  • Joan Cusack has also been in three films with Hayden Panettiere - Raising Helen, Ice Princess and in a Celebrity Voice Actor capacity Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil.
• James Cagney and Joan Blondell, early in their film careers; they were together in Sinners Holiday, Other Men's Women, The Public Enemy (1931), Blonde Crazy, The Crowd Roars, Footlight Parade and He Was Her Man between 1930 and 1934.
• Leon Ames and Mary Astor, most notably in Meet Me in St. Louis and Little Women (1949).
• Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart. First as the horrifying Jane and the helpless Bella in The Twilight Saga, then as the lovers Cherie Currie and Joan Jett in the Biopic The Runaways. So much so that Fanning allegedly took part on the former to build a rapport with Stewart in preparation for the latter.
• Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran were cast as brothers in five Disney movies of the late Fifties and early Sixties: Old Yeller, The Shaggy Dog, Swiss Family Robinson, Bon Voyage!, and Savage Sam (where they reprised their Old Yeller roles).
• Pierre Arditi and Sabine Azéma are only good friends in real life, but you'd be forgiven for thinking they're married... Filmmakers have a thing for making these two French actors play couples. Alain Resnais paired them in almost all of his movies and they've been either husband and wife or lovers in at the very least ten films since 1983.
• Jackie Chan with either Sammo Hung and/or Yuen Biao. Sometimes all three. Which makes sense, since the trio are trained in the same martial arts academy.
• Even before Life On Mars, John Simm and Phil Glenister had done State of Play and Tuesday. In 2010, they were reunited in Mad Dogs.
  • They were joined by Marc Warren (Danny from Hustle) in one episode of Life on Mars, State of Play and Mad Dogs, so it seems it's a trio.
• Russian comedy trio Vicin, Nikulin and Morgunov (Coward, Booby and Hardened) appeared in total of seven movies until Nikulin decided it's overdone.
• Danny DeVito befriended Jack Nicholson when they appeared in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest together. They appeared in several other films together, including Terms of Endearment, Goin South, Mars Attacks!, and Hoffa, which DeVito directed.
• Christopher Lloyd also appeared with Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and several other movies, including The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) and Goin South.
• John P. Ryan had supporting roles in several films starring Jack Nicholson, such as Five Easy Pieces,The King of Marvin Gardens, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) and Hoffa.
• Character actor Scatman Crothers appeared with buddy Jack Nicholson in several films, including One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Shining and The King of Marvin Gardens.
  • A number of Jack Nicholson's other friends had early roles in films where Nicholson was the star, including character actors such as Jeff Morris and Tracey Walter.
• In many anime dubs from the early 2000's, it was not uncommon to have Steve Blum and Wendee Lee appear in the same series. Their most famous roles together were of Spike Spiegel and Faye Valentine in Cowboy Bebop, but the two have also performed together in Rurouni Kenshin as Makoto Shishio and Yumi Komagata, The Big O as Roger Smith and Angel, and Great Teacher Onizuka as Eikichi Onizuka and Azusa Fuyutsuki.
• Kenichi Suzumura and Maaya Sakamoto, whose characters are often in love (sometimes one-sided, sometimes reciprocated). This became Hilarious in Hindsight when they got married in August 2011.
• Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins of Ginger Snaps fame played sisters again in Another Cinderella Story.
• Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill pulled this off playing only one role each: They took on the roles of Batman and The Joker, for Batman: The Animated Series, where they proceeded to vocally define the Caped Crusader and the Clown Prince of Crime for the next thirty years. Although sometimes they're not and in DC productions where Conroy wasn't Batman they've often got Mark Hamill to play his opposite number because they work so well together. Hamill himself recognized the strength of this trope, such that when Conroy passed due to intestinal cancer in 2022, he swore off playing his iconic role as the Joker ever again.
• Doris Day and Rock Hudson are well-known for starring together, despite only doing so in 3 movies: Pillow Talk, Lover Come Back and Send Me No Flowers (which all also starred Tony Randall).
  • However, she did five films with Gordon MacRae: Starlift, Tea For Two, The West Point Story, On Moonlight Bay and its sequel By The Light of the Silvery Moon.
• Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney first starred together in Thoroughbreds Don't Cry. Over the next six years, they appeared in three movies as Betsy Booth and Andy Hardy, and also starred in the movie musicals Babes in Arms, Strike Up the Band, Babes on Broadway and Girl Crazy.
• Adam Sandler seems to love working with Drew Barrymore. Currently they have starred opposite each other in three movies. First in The Wedding Singer, second in 50 First Dates, and finally in Blended.
  • He also has this with Kevin James, Chris Rock and used to have this with Rob Schneider.
• James Stewart starred in four films with Margaret Sullavan (Next Time We Love, The Shopworn Angel, The Mortal Storm, The Shop Around the Corner), and three with June Allyson (The Stratton Story, The Glenn Miller Story, Strategic Air Command).
• Lauren Bacall's first role on the screen was as Humphrey Bogart's love interest in To Have And Have Not. They got married and subsequently co-starred in The Big Sleep, Dark Passage and Key Largo.
• Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo appeared together in Wonder Man, The Kid from Brooklyn, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) and A Song Is Born. Mayo also had a bit part in Kaye's first feature film, Up In Arms.
• Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland were in eight films together between 1935 and 1941 — mostly because she was one of the few women who could put up with him, but they also had fantastic chemistry and were actually very good friends. And both had unrequited crushes on each other. Darn.
  • Flynn appeared opposite Basil Rathbone in Captain Blood, The Dawn Patrol and The Adventures of Robin Hood.
• Jean Harlow, in her too-brief film career, starred in six movies with Clark Gable: The Secret Six, Red Dust, Hold Your Man, China Seas, Wife vs. Secretary and Saratoga. Una Merkel co-starred in four Harlow films: Red-Headed Woman, Bombshell (1933), Rifraff and Saratoga. Both probably would have made more films if not for Harlow's sudden death from kidney failure at age 26.
• Bette Davis named Claude Rains as her favorite person to work with; Rains appeared in four movies Davis starred in, playing second to Paul Henreid in Now, Voyager and Deception (1946).
• John Hurt and Ray Winstone have appeared in several films together (though not always sharing scenes), i.e. The Proposition, 44 Inch Chest, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
• Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau starred together in The Fortune Cookie, The Odd Couple (1968) and The Odd Couple II, The Front Page, Buddy Buddy, Grumpy Old Men (and its sequel, which actually sparked a revival of the pairing for a few more movies in the '90s), The Grass Harp and Out to Sea. They both had parts in JFK, but shared no scenes together. The one movie Lemmon directed, Kotch, starred Matthau. After both actors passed away, they were even buried in the same graveyard, near each other.
• Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder did four films together: Silver Streak, Stir Crazy, See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Another You. They would have also starred together in Blazing Saddles if not for Executive Meddling, though Pryor did remain on the film as a writer.
• Tim Conway and Don Knotts starred together in the two The Apple Dumpling Gang movies, along with The Private Eyes and The Prize Fighter. Both actors also appeared in Gus, though they didn't share any scenes together.
• Brazilian actors Wagner Moura (best known for his roles in The Elite Squad and Narcos) and Lázaro Ramos, going as early as 1998 and even extending to the Penélope Cruz film Woman on Top (2000).
• Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans have been in eight films together so far: The Perfect Score, The Nanny Diaries, The Avengers (2012), Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, Captain Marvel (2019), Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.
• Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster starred in six movies together: I Walk Alone (1948), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Devil's Disciple (1959), The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), Seven Days in May (1964), and Tough Guys (1986).
• Amanda Seyfried, Justin Timberlake, Vincent Kartheiser, and Olivia Wilde were in Alpha Dog and In Time.
• Elliot Page and Maxwell McCabe-Lokos. They were in both The Tracey Fragments and Mouth to Mouth together, both times playing fucked up people on good terms with one another. In the former, McCabe-Lokos helps Page's character, and in the latter, it's the opposite.
• Italian actors Bud Spencer and Terence Hill worked so well as a screen couple, they made over a dozen films together from the late 60s to the 80s. They first appeared together in the 1959 film Hannibal, under their original names of Carlo Pedersoli and Mario Girotti. There's even a video game made in the likeness of the two kicking ass side-by-side!
• Emma Roberts has been in three films with Rory Culkin - Lymelife, Twelve 2010 and Scream 4 (the latter also counts as a reunion for Mary McDonnell and Hayden Panettiere, as both were in the Poorly Disguised Pilot / Made-for-TV Movie Chestnut Hill).
• Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in The Godfather Part II (although they never appeared together in this one), Heat, Righteous Kill and The Irishman.
  • De Niro and Joe Pesci in Raging Bull, Once Upon a Time in America, Goodfellas, A Bronx Tale, Casino, The Good Shepherd and The Irishman.
    • Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Casino also feature Frank Vincent, typically on the receiving end of violence from Pesci's character. Pesci and Vincent previously appeared together in The Death Collector (which got them their Raging Bull gigs after De Niro saw it), and later in Easy Money and Dear Mr. Wonderful, and had been longtime collaborators even before their film careers as musicians and as a Martin and Lewis-style comedy team (Pesci was the Jerry Lewis-type figure).
  • De Niro and Harvey Keitel in Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Falling in Love, Cop Land, Arthur and the Invisibles, Little Fockers, The Comedian and The Irishman.
• Before their deaths, Anthony Perkins is paired up with Martin Balsam in three movies: Psycho, Catch-22, and Murder on the Orient Express (1974).
• Arnold Schwarzenegger is buddies with Sven-Ole Thorsen in numerous films, including Conan the Barbarian (1982), Predator, Eraser, and End of Days.
  • Ahhnold also seems to have a connection with Bill Paxton, who appeared in the films Commando, The Terminator and True Lies.
  • And Arnold has also cultivated such a relationship with Sylvester Stallone, after enjoying a Friendly Rivalry with him for years; both played in all three Expendables movies as well as Escape Plan.
• Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in Joe Versus the Volcano (1990), Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and You've Got Mail (1998).
  • Also Hanks and Gary Sinise in Forrest Gump (1994), Apollo 13 (1995) and The Green Mile (1999).
• Burt Reynolds and Dom De Luise have a number of co-starring roles, including The End, the second Smokey and the Bandit, All Dogs Go to Heaven and both Cannonball Run films. The fact that they were good friends makes this not surprising. For a lesser interpretation of "co-starring," Reynolds also played a part (as himself) in Mel Brooks' Silent Movie, which DeLuise played a major part in.
• The two "Coreys" Corey Haim and Corey Feldman. Their credits together include The Lost Boys, License to Drive, and Dream A Little Dream. And their Reality Show.
• Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty first appeared together in Deliverance, and in White Lightning the following year. They would go on to appear in four more films together.
• Between 1942 and 1945, Donald O'Connor and Peggy Ryan were in 12 movies together, not counting their guest spots in Bowery To Broadway or Follow The Boys. Of those 12, the first three (What's Cookin'?, Private Buckaroo, Give Out, Sisters) had them as mere supporting players in Andrews Sisters vehicles, and four of them also featured Gloria Jean.
• Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in Gangster Squad, Crazy, Stupid, Love, and La La Land. Playing couples in Los Angeles in all three!
• Jane Fonda and Robert Redford appeared in four films together over the course of five decades: The Chase (1966), Barefoot in the Park (1967), The Electric Horseman (1979) and Our Souls at Night (2017).
• Fonda and Lily Tomlin appeared in three movies (9 to 5, Moving On and 80 for Brady) and the TV series Grace and Frankie.
• Emily Rose from Haven starred with Lucas Bryant in Perfect Plan (2010). She also worked with Nolan North and Claudia Black in Uncharted.
• Spartacus: Blood and Sand examples:
  • Many, many cast members also appear in Legend of the Seeker.
  • Manu Bennett (Crixus) was in an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess, where his character has an affair with Xena, just like Crixus has an affair with Lucretia, played by Lucy Lawless.
  • Viva Bianca (Ilithyia) and Hanna Mangan Lawrence (Seppia) starred in X: Night of Vengeance.
• Brent Briscoe often appeared in supporting roles in films with his friend Billy Bob Thornton, e.g. Sling Blade, A Simple Plan, Mister Woodcock, and several others.
• James Franco and Mila Kunis are in Date Night, Oz the Great and Powerful, Tar and Third Person.
• Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly in the musicals Anchors Aweigh, On the Town, and Take Me Out to The Ball Game.
  • Kelly starred opposite Judy Garland in the musicals For Me and My Gal, Thousands Cheer, Ziegfeld Follies (1945), The Pirate, Words and Music and Summer Stock. They would have re-teamed again for Easter Parade, but Kelly injured his ankle, prompting Fred Astaire to come out of retirement.
• The success of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was in large part due to the chemistry between leads Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Little wonder they were paired again in The Sting.
• The box office value of film pairings such as these was established early on, as recognized by the in-universe example of Don Lockwood & Lina Lamont from Singin' in the Rain.
• Jennifer Connelly and Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind, Winter's Tale and Noah. Russell also worked with Connelly's husband Paul Bettany in A Beautiful Mind and Master and Commander.
• Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, Serena (which they shot in between the other two) and Joy (2015).
• Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson, in both the Zombieland and Now You See Me duologies.
• Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis appeared in Max Payne, Date Night and Ted.
• Other than the two live-action Scooby-Doo movies, Matthew Lillard and Freddie Prinze Jr. worked together on She's All That, Wing Commander and Summer Catch.
• Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have been in the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The World's End) and the movie Paul, as well as the television series Spaced. They also starred together in a Dropout sketch, where they played R2-D2 and C-3PO. In The Adventures of Tintin (2011) they played the twins Thompson and Thomson and in The Boxtrolls both appear, but their characters never actually meet.
• Although their partnership was tragically cut short, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd made three films together (1941 (1979), Neighbors and The Blues Brothers) and would certainly have gone on to do more - had he lived, Belushi would have been in at least two more films with Aykroyd (he would have been in Blues Brothers 2000 and played Venkman in Ghostbusters). Hell, at one point, Martin Scorsese wanted them to be in Gangs of New York together. (Yes, Scorsese has been working on the idea that long.)
  • Fellow SNL alumni and frequent co-collaborators Harold Ramis and Bill Murray were also this early in their careers.
• Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman have appeared together in five films (Kiss the Girls, High Crimes, Dolphin Tale, Olympus Has Fallen and Dolphin Tale 2).
• Richard Gere and Diane Lane first starred together in The Cotton Club in 1984. 18 years later, they reunited for Unfaithful, which is essentially a Gender Flip of Fatal Attraction. Six years later, they worked together again on the Nicholas Sparks film Nights in Rodanthe.
• Bob Hope and Bing Crosby made several Road to ... pictures together, and often swapped or shared cameos in other films.
• Other than Lethal Weapon 3 and Lethal Weapon 4, Mel Gibson and Rene Russo also made Ransom together in between these two films.
• Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan hooked up on the set of Innerspace, and worked together twice more with the remake of D.O.A. and Flesh And Bone 1993.
• Gabriel Byrne and Ellen Barkin fell in love on the set of Siesta, and did two more movies together with Into The West and Mad Dog Time before calling it quits.
• Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford appeared in five films together: The Lady In Question, Gilda, The Loves of Carmen, Affair In Trinidad and finally The Money Trap.
• Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. First they were together in Sherlock. Then, they ended up in The Hobbit. Now, though they're not in the same film, they have joined the Marvel universe, with Cumberbatch playing Doctor Strange (2016) and Freeman as Everett Ross in Captain America: Civil War and Black Panther (2018).
  • Freeman did reunite with someone from the first The Hobbit, Andy Serkis, in Black Panther.
• Ben Mendelsohn and Scoot McNairy have appeared in Killing Them Softly, Black Sea and Axe Cop where they played characters named... Ben and Scoot.
• Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane, mainly on Broadway, where they played Leo Bloom and Max Bialystock in The Producers (reprising those roles in the 2005 movie version), Felix Unger and Oscar Madison in a revival of The Odd Couple, and Peter Austin and James Wicker in It's Only a Play. Oddly enough, their first collaboration was different—Broderick voiced adult Simba and Lane voiced Timon in The Lion King (1994). They were given adjacent stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
• Peter Dinklage and Lena Headey both star together in Game of Thrones, playing brother and sister. They have also appeared in two movies together - Pete Smalls Is Dead and Low Down - and also made appearances on the same episode of Sesame Street.
• Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill appear together in 21 Jump Street, the sequel 22 Jump Street, This Is the End, The LEGO Movie, Hail, Caesar!, The LEGO Batman Movie and The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part.
• Andy Mientus and Krysta Rodriguez have been in Smash, Chasing Life, and Spring Awakening together.
• Johnny Depp and Paul Bettany have worked together on The Tourist, Transcendence and Mortdecai.
• Neil Patrick Harris and Patti LuPone have made a habit of doing Sondheim shows together. First was the concert production of Sweeney Todd (where he was Toby to her Mrs. Lovett), then the Lincoln Center revival of Company (as Bobby to her Joanne).
  • If you continue along that line, Patti LuPone, Michael Cerveris and Audra McDonald did several Sondheim shows together (Passion, Sunday in the Park with George, and Anyone Can Whistle) over a few years, mostly at the Ravinia Festival. Furthermore, Patti LuPone and Michael Cerveris starred together in the 2005 revival of Sweeney Todd, and she also worked with Audra McDonald at LA Opera in The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and the previous concert production of Sweeney Todd (although only in New York, not the filmed San Francisco concert version). Furthermore, the Sweeney in the concert productions was George Hearn, who starred opposite LuPone at the Ravinia production of A Little Night Music, another Sondheim show.
• James Caan and Robert Duvall were onetime roommates, and appeared together in five films: Countdown, The Rain People, The Godfather, The Godfather Part II and the 1975 version of The Killer Elite.
• Robert Duvall and Billy Bob Thornton appeared together in The Stars Fell On Henrietta, Sling Blade,The Apostle, and The Judge.
• Robert Duvall and Wilford Brimley, good friends in life, appeared together in Lawman, The Stone Boy, Tender Mercies and The Natural. Brimley also had an uncredited role in True Grit, which was one of Duvall's earlier movie roles.
• Mary McDonnell and Alfre Woodard were together in Grand Canyon, Passion Fish, Blue Chips and Mumford.
• Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell. They first got together playing the leads in Prison Break. Later they joined the Arrowverse playing DC super villains Captain Cold and Heatwave first in The Flash (2014) and then Legends of Tomorrow.
• Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, enough that The Other Wiki has a page on them. they have their own sketch show, they're the eponymous duo of Jeeves and Wooster, numerous recurring roles in Blackadder, the Narrator and Newton in LittleBigPlanet 3...
  • Word of God states that Stephen Fry was eventually meant to appear in House as the even smarter and more irritable older brother of Laurie's titular character, in a reference to Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes. Scheduling conflicts meant this never became a reality, however; and later seasons more firmly established House as an only child.
  • Laurie also appeared on the first episode of QI.
• Mad TV veterans Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele of Key & Peele, whenever one of them as much a has a guest role in a TV show such as Bob's Burgers or Rick and Morty they will usually find a role for the other one.
• Charles Bronson and James Coburn in The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Great Escape and Hard Times.
  • On a similar note, Steve McQueen (actor) and Robert Vaughn in The Magnificent Seven, Bullitt and The Towering Inferno.
  • Bronson and Coburn also made guest appearances in McQueen's TV series Wanted: Dead or Alive.
• Real life couple Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor starred in several films together - Cleopatra, The V.I.P.s, The Sandpiper, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Taming of the Shrew, Anne of the Thousand Days, Doctor Faustus, Boom!, Under Milk Wood and the Made-for-TV Movie Divorce His - Divorce Hers. They also appeared on stage together in 1983 revival of Private Lives.
• Michael Hordern often appeared in films with Richard Burton, e.g. Alexander the Great (1956), Cleopatra, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Where Eagles Dare, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Medusa Touch.
• Cyril Cusack had several supporting roles in films starring Richard Burton, including Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Taming of the Shrew, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Love Spell.
• Michael Hordern appeared in over a half-dozen films with Harry Andrews.
• Woody Allen often worked with former girlfriend Diane Keaton - Play It Again, Sam, Sleeper, Love and Death, Annie Hall, Manhattan and Manhattan Murder Mystery.
  • Allen also worked with former wife Mia Farrow on a lot of films - A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Shadows and Fog and Husbands and Wives.
• Real life couple Warren Beatty and Julie Christie in McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Shampoo and Heaven Can Wait (1978).
• Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort have appeared together in the Divergent quartet and The Fault in Our Stars. They would've been in Carrie (2013) together as well if she had been chosen for the title role; instead, it was given to Chloë Grace Moretz.
• Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman have appeared together in The Dark Knight Trilogy, Now You See Me and now Going in Style (2017).
• Amy Poehler and Tina Fey originally achieved fame as a double act on Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update, and have appeared in a half a dozen films together, frequently as co-leads. They're also a popular double act for hosting awards shows.
• Tim Roth and Gary Oldman appeared in several films together early in their careers, most notably as the title characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, but have not shared the screen so far this century.
• Despite their great political differences, John Wayne appeared in three films with Kirk Douglas - In Harm's Way, Cast a Giant Shadow and The War Wagon.
• Colin Firth and Hugh Grant have been in four films together - the three Bridget Jones films and Love Actually.
• Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern have played a married couple no less than three times: Thursday the 12th, Freezing, and most famously Downton Abbey.
• Hugh Bonneville and Sally Hawkins are now down on the same path — they played couples in Paddington (2014) as well as The Hollow Crown: The War of the Roses.
• Idina Menzel and Jonathan Groff made special guest appearances on Glee. They’ve also lent their voices to Elsa and Kristoff in Frozen and all subsequent installments of that franchise.
• John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara starred together in Rio Grande, The Quiet Man, McLintock!, and Big Jake. Wayne also had quite a few other actors he worked with multiple times. Among them are Ben Johnson, Ward Bond, John Carradine and Victor Mc Laglen were just a few of his many frequent co-stars.
• Catherine Tate and David Tennant have been pretty much inseparable after they met on Doctor Who as Donna Noble and the Tenth Doctor. They've played opposite from each other as Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing (among other Shakespeare-adaptations), Comic Relief, The Catherine Tate Show, Big Finish Doctor Who, DuckTales (2017) (with Tate's Magica De Spell being antagonist to Tennant's Scrooge McDuck) and many more.
• Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum made four films together: Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), The Sundowners (1960), The Grass is Greener (1960), and Reunion at Fairborough (1985). They were lifelong friends, and Mitchum would later cite her as the favourite leading lady of his career.
• Rebel Wilson and Adam Devine have played love interests in Workaholics, Pitch Perfect, Pitch Perfect 2 and Isn't It Romantic.
• This is almost enforced with the Top Star system in Takarazuka Revue. Typically, the top otokoyaku (male role actress) and top musumeyaku (female role actress) would play the biggest male and female roles of the production that their troupe puts on while they are top. Often, these would be the protagonist/antagonist and their love interest, but there have been aversions^note For the adaptation of The Poe Clan, top stars Asumi Rio and Senna Ayase played Edgar Portsnell and Baroness Sheila Portsnell. Sheila is a Cool Big Sis who becomes adoptive mother to Edgar..
• William Hurt and Maria Bello have worked together on three occasions: in 2005's A History of Violence (where their characters didn't share any scenes); 2008's The Yellow Handkerchief, an indie drama/romance; and the 2016 legal drama Goliath.
• Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara have starred in multiple projects together over four decades, often playing husband and wife. This includes SCTV, Schitt's Creek, Over the Hedge and multiple films as part of Christopher Guest's Production Posse. They capped off their run on Schitt's Creek by winning Emmys for Best Actor and Actress in a Comedy, respectively.
• Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder in Bram Stoker's Dracula, A Scanner Darkly and Destination Wedding.
• Kate Ritchie and Martin Dingle Wall have twice played a romantic couple (Sally and Flynn on Home and Away (though Flynn had been recast by the time the two got engaged) and Les and Judi Kane in Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities) and once played two (platonic) partnered police detectives (Cops: L.A.C.).
• Conrad Coleby and Josh Quong Tart have played best friends on All Saints, headLand and Home and Away.
• Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt have co- starred in The Devil Wears Prada, Into the Woods and Mary Poppins Returns.
• Johnny Yong Bosch and Dan Southworth are both Power Rangers alumni. Even though their respective Rangers did not appear in the same series, the two have acted together in video games, most famously as Nero and Vergil in the Devil May Cry series. The two also got to show off their stunt work and martial arts against each other in the indie film Broken Path.
• Legendary character actor Strother Martin had a career defined by this. He appeared in six films each with Paul Newman and John Wayne. He also did six films (and a couple TV episodes) with fellow character actor L.Q. Jones, often in Those Two Guys pairings.
• Peter Cook and Dudley Moore were a beloved double act in England, appearing on television (Beyond The Fringe, Not Only... But Also), films (The Wrong Box, Bedazzled (1967), The Hound of the Baskervilles), albums (Derek and Clive) and numerous stage shows.
• Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi co-starred in several horror films — The Black Cat, Gift of Gab, The Raven (1935), The Invisible Ray, Son of Frankenstein, Black Friday, You'll Find Out and The Body Snatcher.
• Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh starred together on stage and screen, including Fire Over England, 21 Days Together and That Hamilton Woman.
• Outside of the Ocean's Eleven trilogy, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon appeared in Happy Feet Two.
• Michael Biehn and Bill Paxton appeared in The Terminator, Aliens, Tombstone and Navy Seals (1990).
• Roger Moore and Patrick Macnee in Sherlock Holmes in New York, The Sea Wolves and A View to a Kill.
  • Robert Brown played Moore's squire in Ivanhoe, made two guest appearances on The Saint and appeared in three of his Bond films (first as an admiral, then as M).
  • Lois Maxwell was Moore's classmate at RADA. She made two guest appearances on The Saint and one on The Persuaders! before becoming his Moneypenny.
  • David Hedison appeared opposite Moore in Live and Let Die, North Sea Hijack, The Naked Face and an episode of The Saint.
• Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer in Stardust, New Year's Eve and The Family.
• Jason Statham, Jason Flemyng and Vinnie Jones in Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch. and Mean Machine. Statham and Flemyng also appeared in Transporter 2.
• Jason Flemyng and Dexter Fletcher in Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Tube Tales, Below, Layer Cake, Stardust, Kick-Ass, Dead Cert, Jack Falls, Wild Bill, Sunshine on Leith and Eat Locals.
• Real-life married couple James Bolam and Susan Jameson in When the Boat Comes In, Close and True, New Tricks and Grandpa in My Pocket.
• Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia, The Night of the Generals, The Rainbow Thief, Gulliver's Travels and One Night with the King.
• Sean Connery and Robert Shaw in an ITV Play of the Week ("The Pets"), From Russia with Love and Robin and Marian.
• Outside of Minder, Dennis Waterman and George Cole co-starred in the horror film Fright and provided the voices for a children's cartoon series called Tube Mice. Cole also made guest appearances in Waterman's shows The Sweeney and New Tricks.
• Anthony Hopkins and Bob Hoskins appeared together in the BBC production of Othello, the made-for-TV movie Mussolini and I, and in Oliver Stone's Nixon.
• Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins appeared together in Beyond the Limit, Mona Lisa, Sweet Liberty, Blue Ice, Last Orders and the Made-for-TV Movie World War II: When Lions Roared.
• Joseph Kosala and Ron Dean were in Code of Silence, Above the Law (1988), The Package, The Fugitive, Steal Big Steal Little, and Chain Reaction together, and often in the same scene. Not by coincidence, all six movies were Andrew Davis films.
• Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly starred in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Step Brothers, and Holmes & Watson, all three of which were distributed by Sony/Columbia Pictures. Reilly also appeared in Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.
• Steve Martin and Martin Short appear together in ¡Three Amigos!, Father of the Bride (1991), and Only Murders in the Building, and both have voice roles in The Prince of Egypt.
• Steve Martin and Rick Moranis have also appeared in multiple films together: e.g. Parenthood, Little Shop of Horrors, My Blue Heaven, and L.A. Story.
• Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter have co-starred in Alice in Wonderland (2010) and its sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass, along with Les Misérables (2012) and Ocean's 8.
• German actors Til Schweiger and Matthias Schweighöfer have often starred in each other's movies (they're both directors-actors), often sharing the screen (also in films not directed by either, such as Four Against the Bank).
• Shemar Moore and Rochelle Aytes played a couple on Criminal Minds. When Moore moved to S.W.A.T. (2017) Aytes followed and played his Love Interest Nichelle. This was probably because they did so well before.
• Harry Lennix and Christina Wren have appeared in Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Rehabilitation of the Hill, the short Lazaretto and Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas (an animated series set in the same universe as Army of the Dead).
• Stephen Root and Bradley Whitford appeared together in RoboCop 3, Bicentennial Man, Get Out (2017) and Three Christs.
• Rooney Mara's done two films with Casey Affleck and three opposite Joaquin Phoenix.
• Daniel Craig and Ben Whishaw have co-starred together in three James Bond films (Skyfall, Spectre, and No Time to Die) , along with The Trench, Layer Cake, and Enduring Love.
• Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato have appeared in Barney & Friends and Princess Protection Program together. Selena even guest-starred on Demi’s show Sonny with a Chance. They were also both given prominent roles in the same episode of Studio DC: Almost Live.
• Sarah Paulson and Lily Rabe have co-starred together on several seasons of American Horror Story. They have also appeared in the plays Colder Than Here and Crimes of the Heart together. Paulson has also appeared opposite Cate Blanchett in Ocean's 8, Carol and Mrs. America. Paulson has also starred alongside Sandra Bullock in both Ocean's 8 and Bird Box.
• Dean Jones and Suzanne Pleshette played the leads in several Walt Disney Pictures comedies, including The Ugly Dachshund, Blackbeard's Ghost and The Shaggy D.A..
• Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen have co-starred together in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Les Misérables (2012), and Alice Through the Looking Glass.
• Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett have appeared together in Boyz n the Hood, What's Love Got to Do with It (1993), Akeelah and the Bee and on the stage. They also appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, albeit not together (Bassett in Black Panther (2018) and Avengers: Endgame, Fishburne in Ant-Man and the Wasp).
• Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby co-starred in Uptown Saturday Night, Let's Do it Again and A Piece of the Action.
• Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis both starred in Pulp Fiction (though without ever sharing the screen); Die Hard with a Vengeance; and Unbreakable and its sequel Glass (2019). Willis also had an uncredited cameo in Loaded Weapon 1, in which Jackson starred.
• Kevin James and Leah Remini starred in The King of Queens and Kevin Can Wait together (though Remini originally only had a guest role in the latter show, before being promoted to the main cast in season 2).
• Chow Yun-fat and Danny Lee appeared in six movies together - The Executor, Tragic Hero, City on Fire, Code of Honour, Rich and Famous and The Killer (1989).
  • Chow and Andy Lau appeared together in Tragic Hero, Rich and Famous, The Romancing Star II, God of Gamblers and its sequel, Beginning of the Great Revival and From Vegas to Macau II and III.
  • Chow appeared opposite Tony Leung Chiu-wai in The Lunatics, Love Unto Waste and Hard Boiled.
• Taika Waititi and Rhys Darby have co-starred together in Radiradirah, What We Do in the Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Our Flag Means Death.
• Dennis Christopher and Paul Dooley play different father-son duos in A Wedding (1978) and the 1979 Academy Award winner Breaking Away.
• Peter Cullen and Frank Welker first worked together on Mighty Man and Yukk as the respective duo, but the two would continue to collaborate on further cartoons like My Little Pony, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero and most famously The Transformers, where they solidified themselves as the original voices of Optimus Prime and Megatron respectively. The two would collaborate on the Transformers Film Series ^note Though Cullen would appear as Prime in all five films, Welker had scheduling conflicts that prevented him from voicing Megatron in the first movie (though he would do it for the first two video games). He would reprise his other famous role as Soundwave starting with the second, then take over from Hugo Weaving during the fourth film as Megatron's reformatted state Galvatron before he would come back as Megatron in the fifth and again on Transformers: Prime. Cullen even convinced Welker to join him on the convention circuit, and the duo frequently appear together at various cons.
• French actors Thierry Lhermitte and Patrick Timsit appeared in Little Indian, Big City in 1994, Marquise in 1997, The Prince of the Pacific in 2000, L'Américain in 2004, Incontrôlable in 2006, A nos âges in 2020 and Alors on danse in 2021. Lhermitte also had a Voice-Only Cameo in Timsit's Quasimodo d'El Paris.
• Benjamin Walker and Joseph Mawle play together in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter as father and son, and in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power as Elves.
• George Clooney and Julia Roberts worked together in five films — Ocean's Eleven, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (which Clooney directed), Ocean's Twelve, Money Monster and Ticket to Paradise.
• Shōzō Iizuka and Mitsuo Ando are two popular villain actors in Toku who are often cast together, with Iizuka's Large Ham playing nicely off of Ando's Cold Ham. Their roles vary between master and subordinate, villains who are at odds, or both.
• Iizuka has also been often cast together with Machiko Soga, another Large Ham Toku actor, with one usually playing the Big Bad and the other The Dragon. Jikuu Senshi Spielban and Sekai Ninja Sen Jiraiya being two examples.
• French comedy giant Louis de Funès was frequently paired with the same actors, even in unrelated films:
  • Notably, Robert Dhéry, Michel Galabru, Paul Préboist, Jean Lefebvre and Maurice Risch as a Foil, Bumbling Sidekick or Ham-to-Ham Combat adversary. Sometimes, De Funès felt the need to have someone to comedically dialogue with in pictures where it wasn't in the script, phoned his good friend Galabru, and the latter came on set without even having been originally cast.
  • Claude Gensac played his wife in seven movies, including three times in the Gendarme series. And she still had minor roles in three others (The Wing or the Thigh, The Miser and La Soupe aux choux), not counting theater plays (where they first met). Sometimes you'll find people who think they were married in Real Life (it wasn't the case).
  • His two highest-grossing movies (The Sucker and La Grande Vadrouille) were with another French comedy superstar, André Raimbourg, better known as Bourvil. They also played together in La Traversée de Paris (1956) and Poisson d'avril (1954), where De Funès had smaller roles. A third Gérard Oury film, Delusions of Grandeur, was planned to be their fifth together, but it was derailed by Bourvil's death. Yves Montand took his place after his wife Simone Signoret told Oury about him, and the whole story was rewritten to match differences between Montand and Bourvil.
  • After his memorable scene with Jean Gabin in La Traversée de Paris (1956), they were reunited in Le Gentleman d'Epsom (1962) and The Tattoo (1968), where they're an Odd Couple for the whole last movie.
  • In both Jo and The Big Restaurant, he's facing Bernard Blier as a Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist (and Straight Man).
• Marla Gibbs and Jackée Harry have appeared together in 227, The First Family, and Days of Our Lives. In fact, the latter two series both cast them as mother and daughter.
• Ana de Armas and Chris Evans have appeared together in Knives Out, The Gray Man and Ghosted.
• A wild Soap Opera example is Jane Elliot and Wally Kurth. Elliot took a break from her role as Tracy Quartermaine on General Hospital and joined the cast of Days of Our Lives from 1987-89 to play Anjelica Deveraux, who had an Age-Gap Romance with Kurth's character Justin Kiriakis. Then after Elliot went back to GH, Kurth rejoined her in 1991 to take over the role of Tracy's son Ned Ashton.
• David Tennant and Michael Sheen have appeared together multiple times. While they first worked together on Bright Young Things (2003), it was Good Omens that solidified them as a duo. They also collaborated on the meta comedy Staged and The Sandman audio adaptations.
• Cillian Murphy and Tom Hardy have appeared in several projects together over the years. Their most high profile collaborations are in the Christopher Nolan-directed films Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, and Dunkirk. However, Hardy also played the recurring role of Alfie Solomons on Peaky Blinders, while Murphy played the lead character in the show.
• Terry Scott and Hugh Lloyd starred together in Hugh and I, the follow-up series Hugh and I Spy, and The Gnomes of Dulwich.
• Donald Hewlett and Michael Knowles were often partnered together in David Croft's sitcoms. They played upper-class British army officers Colonel Reynolds and Captain Ashwood in It Ain't Half Hot, Mum, mathematicians Carstairs and Fanshaw in Come Back Mrs. Noah, and aristocratic brothers Lord Meldrum and Teddy Meldrum in You Rang, M'Lord?.

---