The 10 Best Actor-Director Collaborations Of All Time

Actor-director collaborations are unlike any other in movies, and have more in common with a musician-conductor, or even a star athlete and coach. It involves people with different roles and skills who together elevate the entire production through their abilities (actor/musician/athlete), and leadership (director/conductor/coach). Some may go even further, and say the relationship between actor and director is almost like the instrument and its musician. But whichever way you characterize the actor-director relationship, there’s no denying there have been many great ones in movie history. We’re looking at the best ever.

I’m focusing on quality, not quantity, so while Bill Murray has been in almost every Wes Anderson movie, he’s mostly been in small roles. I’m also looking at diversity of output, so while Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford have made four movies together, all were “Indiana Jones” movies (though Ford famously turned Spielberg down for “Jurassic Park”).  The collaboration needs to include at least one career-defining movie for both actor and director, so while Daniel Day-Lewis and Martin Scorsese made two good movies together, neither will be defined by “The Age of Innocence” or “Gangs of New York.” Finally, despite some of these directors having a “stock company” of actors they collaborate with frequently — and vice-versa, actors have collaborated with different directors on multiple great movies — I’m focusing on the one key collaboration (yep, it’s as hard as it sounds), so some partnerships will be left out. 

With our parameters set, here are the greatest actor-director collaborations of all time.

“The Master of Cinema,” Akira Kurosawa, and “The Wolf,” Toshiro Mifune, made 16 movies together. Among them are the greatest samurai movies ever, including the GOAT, “Seven Samurai,”  which is also my pick for the greatest ancient war movie. While they’re most known for their samurai films, the duo delivered in multiple genres: film noir (“Stray Dog”), corporate espionage (“High & Low”), Shakespeare adaptations (“Throne of Blood,” “The Bad Sleep Well”), Dostoevsky adaptations (“The Idiot”), and more. As excellent as their work was, the most impressive thing about their collaboration was their influence. 

Next to Godzilla, Kurosawa and Mifune helped bring Japanese pop culture to the world; first with “Rashomon” winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and then with “Seven Samurai” and “Yojimbo” respectively being remade as the Westerns “The Magnificent Seven” and “A Fistful Of Dollars.” So it’s no exaggeration to say Clint Eastwood has a film career thanks to Kurosawa-Mifune. The duo’s remarkable output (all good, many great, some masterpieces) came to a close after 18 years with — and because of — 1965’s “Red Beard. Mifune grew his beard for the role, limiting his other roles and putting him into debt, for which he blamed Kurosawa. Despite the rift, the two remained respectful, with Kurosawa saying, “All the films that I made with Mifune, without him, they would not exist,” and Mifune going one better by remarking, “I have never as an actor done anything that I am proud of other than with him.”

John Feeney, better known as John Ford, is the most decorated director in Hollywood history and is considered by many to be the most influential director of them all. Marion Morrison, who you probably know better as John Wayne, only won one competitive Oscar, yet his iconic screen persona puts him on the Mt. Rushmore of Movie Stars, a legend largely created and shaped by John Ford. It’s ironic, then, that Wayne’s lone Oscar (effectively a Lifetime Achievement Award for “True Grit”) was not directed by Ford. There’s no denying Ford made John Wayne, first by bringing the USC football player into show business, later turning the B-movie cowboy actor into a bankable star with “Stagecoach,” and ultimately crafting Wayne’s persona into a symbol of America itself across their 14 collaborations in 24 years.

Still, you shouldn’t think that this was a one-way relationship. Ford needed Wayne just as much as Wayne needed Ford, as the established director recognized the unprecedented star power potential latent within his underdeveloped pupil, and made his best work with Wayne — even if he had to berate it out of him. Ford was a mean-spirited bully to most of his actors, but none more so than his biggest star, Wayne. Yet that never stopped The Duke from maintaining a paternal affection for “Pappy” Ford. Ford and Wayne didn’t just make each other; together, they helped craft how the world sees the American West, a legend that still stands to this day.

Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio may one day be on this list. But despite their six films (and counting) being the most lucrative of Scorsese’s career, as well as including the collaboration that finally brought Scorsese his long-deserved Oscar win, we still doubt this relationship will match Scorsese’s half-century-long collaboration with Robert De Niro. For starters, Scorsese’s collaboration with DiCaprio is more akin to a mentor-pupil relationship. Nothing wrong with that (see Kurosawa-Mifune, Ford-Wayne), but Scorsese’s collaboration with De Niro is one of equals. Both started working as two hungry young artists “growing up,” and eventually became old masters of the cinematic medium together. There’s also the work.

“Taxi Driver.” “Raging Bull.” “Goodfellas.” These are the greatest movies either man has ever made, and some of the best American films, period. Throw in undisputed masterworks like “Mean Streets,” “The King of Comedy,” and “Casino,” and you can easily see why Scorsese and De Niro’s 10-film collaboration is considered one of the greatest of all time. Five of De Niro’s nine Oscar noms were in Scorsese movies, including one of his two wins (“Raging Bull”). Heck, the two even shared a nom for co-producing “The Irishman,” while Scorsese recently directed De Niro to another acting honor for “Killers of the Flower Moon.” The two could have “broken up” decades ago and still been among the greatest cinematic collaborators. The fact that they’re still going strong more than 50 years later is just gravy.

Frank Capra (Francesco Rosario Capra) had an immigrant’s undying faith in the American Dream, forever seeing America as a place where “the little guy” could stand up to the criminal and corrupt. Capra used the art of filmmaking to tell this inspiring story, and first found his muse in the stolid, soft-spoken form of Gary Cooper, whose two collaborations — “Mr. Deeds Goes To Town” and “Meet John Doe” — are among both men’s best. But, as great as their collaboration was, it still stands a distant second to Capra’s greatest working relationship with James “Jimmy” Stewart.

Stewart could be on this list for his work with Anthony Mann (five films) or Alfred Hitchcock (four, including both men’s best movie, “Vertigo”). But those two directors played with the audience’s expectations regarding Stewart’s screen persona; Capra helped create that screen persona. Ironically, their first film, “You Can’t Take It With You,” finds Stewart playing the rich kid who learns money isn’t everything. Well, he clearly learned his lesson, as the duo’s 1939 film “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington” created a totem of tireless integrity in the face of cynicism that we desperately need today. After Jefferson Smith came George Bailey from 1946’s “It’s A Wonderful Life,” the greatest Christmas movie ever. An everyman broken by the weight of the world, George Bailey comes to see just how much his life truly matters, making him (and by extension, Stewart) the patron saint of unsung heroes everywhere.

Vittorio De Sica launched the Italian film renaissance with 1948’s neorealism masterpiece, “The Bicycle Thief,” with a groundbreaking, ground-level, documentary style that inspired the French New Wave, Brazilian Cinema Novo, and ultimately the New Hollywood movement of the 1970s. Yet Italy’s definitive director was a very different kind of filmmaker; Federico Fellini, whose films blended fantasy and reality, creating a hypnotic cinematic experience that was less influential simply because few other directors could hope to master it. Put another way, if Fellini’s contemporaries made films about “real life,” he made movies that felt like dreams. Naturally, his muse was Marcello Mastroianni, who possessed a charisma that crossed borders and far surpassed mere mortals like us.

Fellini made five films with Mastroianni, including both men’s finest work, “La Dolce Vita,” and “8½.” Released in 1960, “La Dolce Vita” follows the adventures of a philandering tabloid muckracker living in Rome through a series of vignettes. In addition to gifting the world the phrase, “La Dolce Vita” (meaning “The Sweet Life”), the film also gave us the word “paparazzi,” named after a pesky photographer in the film. In 1963’s autobiographical “8½,” Mastroianni plays a stand-in for Fellini (yeah right, dude) as an overwhelmed film director who dreamily drifts between working on his latest film, and the fantasy world populated by past lovers. Fellini’s films were flights of fancy born from the filmmaker’s vivid imagination, and brought to life through his closest collaborator, Mastroianni.

When Spike Lee cast John David Washington as the lead in 2018’s “BlacKkKlansman,” it was technically not the first time they worked together. The latter played a student in Spike Lee’s seminal 1992 biopic “Malcolm X,” headlined by Washington’s father — and Lee’s greatest collaborator — Denzel Washington. Lee and Washington’s relationship goes back decades, starting with “Mo’ Better Blues” in 1990. By that point, both Lee and Washington had already made names for themselves in the film industry; Washington as an Oscar-winning star, and Lee as the wonder-kid behind “Do The Right Thing.” Yet the two still became something more together, with the jewel in their cinematic crown being “Malcolm X,” the cinematic epic about the controversial Black nationalist leader.

While Washington didn’t win the Oscar for his role (he lost to Al Pacino’s hammy, consolation-prize performance in “Scent Of A Woman”), “Malcolm X” debatably remains his career-best performance. Yes, even above his Academy Award-winning work in “Training Day,” which has the normally likeable Washington breaking bad. The two followed it up with the sadly underseen family sports drama “He Got Game,” and later with “Inside Man” — the biggest box office hit of Lee’s career, and one of Washington’s top 10 as well. There’s no denying the diversity of their output, as Lee and Washington have delivered both critical darlings and commercial hits, all while doing some of the best work of their respective careers together.

Selecting Alfred Hitchcock’s key collaborator was the most difficult decision on this list. With James Stewart, Hitchcock made the magnificent “Rear Window,” and the best movie of either man’s career (and one of the best ever, period), “Vertigo.” While Hitchcock didn’t have one main actress collaborator, he did have a type, the “icy blonde,” e.g., Grace Kelly, Eva Marie Saint, Janet Leigh, or Tippi Hedren. But while everyman Stewart portrayed how Hitchcock was (domineering, paranoid, voyeuristic), and the icy blondes represented what the director wanted but could never have (beautiful women), one collaborator represented who Hitchcock wanted to be. That was Cary Grant, who was suave, sophisticated, handsome, heroic, and irresistible to women. In turn, Hitchcock took the debonair demeanor Grant had developed over decades and gave him an edge that made the movie star immortal.

In “Suspicion,” Grant plays the “perfect” husband, whose wife (Joan Fontaine) suspects is trying to kill her. Five years later, the duo made “Notorious,” with Grant trading his trademark charm for cruelty, in a masterpiece Roger Ebert called “[T]he most elegant expression of the master’s visual style, just as ‘Vertigo’ is the fullest expression of his obsessions.” In 1955’s “To Catch A Thief,” Hitchcock, Grant, and Grace Kelly went playing in the south of France and invited moviegoers along for the trip, while 1959’s uber-exciting “North By Northwest” became Hitchcock’s conclusive “wrong man on the run” movie. Despite their differences, or maybe because of them, Hitchcock and Grant were each other’s defining collaborator.

You have heard it said that a man’s most important collaborator in life is his wife. Well, in the case of married couple Joel Coen and Frances McDormand, what’s true at home is just as true on the big screen. McDormand has been in nine Joel Coen movies, eight of which he made with his brother Ethan. Their cinematic collaboration started with all of their big screen debuts, 1984’s “Blood Simple,” which clearly turned out well, as they continued making movies for the next forty plus years, while Joel Coen and McDormand got married that same year.

Working with the Coens, McDormand has played small parts in great movies (“Raising Arizona”) and big parts in solid movies (“Burn After Reading.”) While she wasn’t in two of their career-defining features — “The Big Lebowski” and “No Country For All Men” — she starred in the movie many consider the ultimate Coen Brothers masterpiece, “Fargo.” The Coens directed McDormand to her first of three Academy Awards for acting as Marge Gunderson, the heavily accented, very pregnant small-town police chief who happens to also be a brilliant detective. 

Joel Coen and McDormand worked together without brother/brother-in-law Ethan on the magnificent “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” but I maintain much of their best work has been as a trio. Working with family is always risky, particularly on a tense film set, so it’s a good thing the Coens and McDormand are some of the best to ever do it.

As a cinematic stylist, Ingmar Bergman was fascinated by the human face, frequently employing close-ups to convey a character’s inner life. As a storyteller, Bergman was obsessed with human relationships, and how they play out against the backdrop of the “big questions,” like “what happens when we die?,” “who defines right and wrong?,” and “how can one have faith in a world beset by evil?” Bergman had his stock troupe of actors, including Bibi Andersson, with whom he made 13 films, and Liv Ullmann, with whom he made 12 films (he also fathered a child with her during a lengthy extramarital affair). Both belong in the conversation of Bergman’s defining collaborators, but to my mind, the title belongs to Max von Sydow.

Bergman and von Sydow made eleven movies together, but their most famous was also their masterpiece, “The Seventh Seal.” In the 1957 film, von Sydow plays a knight returning from the Crusades to plague-ridden Sweden, where he literally plays a game of chess with Death (Bengt Ekerot). “The Seventh Seal” won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, putting the Swedish film industry on the map. But while Bergman stayed in Sweden, von Sydow became a leading character actor in American movies for decades. Yet the two found their fullest cinematic expressions working together. Von Sydow was not only Bergman’s muse but also his rock, inspiring his most brilliant ideas, but keeping his films anchored to a firm foundation thanks to his indomitable screen presence.

This might be a controversial choice given Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan haven’t even celebrated their 40th birthdays at the time of writing. But that’s exactly why I am including them; they haven’t missed yet — and probably haven’t even hit their primes. Coogler and Jordan have already made five feature films together in just over 10 years (more than Frank Capra made with James Stewart or Alfred Hitchcock made with Cary Grant). In that time, the two have crafted one of the most creative and compelling collaborations in contemporary cinema, managing to be both critically and commercially successful with each film.

Both made a name for themselves with 2013’s “Fruitvale Station,” Coogler’s cinematic debut about a real-life young man’s tragic killing by police. The two quickly made the move into blockbuster filmmaking, first with the refreshing “Rocky” reboot “Creed,” followed by the groundbreaking milestone in superhero cinema, “Black Panther.” Sure, we can quibble about the cinematic merits of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” but considering this was the much-anticipated sequel to an Oscar-nominated, billion-dollar-plus superhero film that literally lost its superhero, I’ll give it a mulligan. In 2025, we got “Sinners,” a singular cinematic vision in an industry stifled by sameness, from two storytellers at the top of their respective games, creating one of the most original films in years. Coogler and Jordan belong on this list for what they have accomplished so far, and I believe will deserve to stay based on whatever comes next.