Favorite Director-Actor Duos

Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan are just the latest example of a long tradition

The artist and their muse is a concept that stretches back over hundreds (if not thousands) of years of art. In film, the frequent director-actor partnership has many, many famous examples: Ford and Wayne. Hitchcock and Stewart. Kurosawa and Mifune. Godard and Karina. Scorsese and De Niro (and then DiCaprio). And on and on and on.

The most recent entry in this type of special collaboration is Sinners, an original action horror blockbuster from director Ryan Coogler and actor Michael B. Jordan, their fifth collaboration. We both saw Sinners last night and it rocks, so go see it this weekend on the biggest screen you can find. In honor of the Coogler-MBJ pairing, we’ve written about a couple of our favorite director-actor duos. Comment below with your favorite examples!

Billy: Pedro Almodovar and Antonio Banderas

Labyrinth of Passion (1982), Matador (1986), Law of Desire (1987), Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1990), The Skin I Live In (2011), I'm So Excited (2013), Pain and Glory (2019)

Not many actors can so impeccably integrate into such a colorful world. Director Pedro Almodovar’s colorful eye is at the center of all of his work and Antonio Banderas is the human personification of Almodovar’s vision. The director describes Banderas as having a romantic face in a Deadline interview with the two of them. A simple comment like that explains why they work so well together.

Almodovar feels romantic about all things in his life. His mother, his desire, his home country of Spain, and debauchery. With that romance his movies can be gratuitous while never feeling threatening or dangerous. Growing up I saw Banderas as an American movie star. Clearly from somewhere else, but he led Spy Kids and Mask of Zorro, so he was sterile. With an obvious charm and sensuality, but nothing overpowering.

Then Pain & Glory came out and my reality changed. Banderas plays a semi-autobiographical version of Pedro in this movie. He has back pain, a complicated relationship with his mother, kisses his lovers sooooo deeply, and is at a classic introspective point in life where your body is broken, your heart is in pieces, and your direction is aimless. The movie spoke so deeply to me that I had to check out all of this director's movies. I didn’t even clock that I was falling in love with Banderas too.

I watched 10 or so Almodovar movies over a span of 12ish weeks with no research about the stories. Pick one and there is Antonio as a bullfighter, a fawned-after son, and a charming kidnapper. Oh shit, they work with each other often?! Eight times, in fact. Despite all of these different and at times shocking roles from Banderas, my reverence for him only deepened, his charm/sensuality incredibly apparent, but he never felt dangerous. That’s where the romance comes in. These two together are just pure romance personified and it is one of the loveliest actor-director pairings.

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Drew: Kelly Reichardt and Michelle Williams

Wendy and Lucy (2008), Meek's Cutoff (2010), Certain Women (2016), Showing Up (2022)

The best muses aren’t just great actors in their own right, but the type of great actor that can seamlessly slip into a director’s very specific milieu. Michelle Williams’ on-screen persona – restrained, vulnerable, feisty – has made her an ideal collaborator with filmmaker Kelly Reichardt and her subtle and minimalist films about characters on the margins just struggling to get by (financially, emotionally, or otherwise). Over four features, Williams and Reichardt have formed perhaps the most underrated and fruitful director-actress duo of the century.

Their partnership owes a debt to director Todd Haynes (Carol, May December), who encouraged Williams to read Reichardt’s script for Wendy and Lucy. This intimate drama about a homeless woman (Williams) searching for her lost dog (Reichardt’s in real life) turned out to be a natural match for Williams’ strengths. Together the independent director and budding movie star gradually build an empathetic and devastating character study.

The pair moved from a small present-day drama to the Oregon Trail of the mid-1800s for Meek’s Cutoff a couple years later. This is Reichardt’s anti-Western, an immaculately crafted version that casts a skeptical eye on the cowboys and settlers of the Old West. Williams plays one of the settler’s wives, simply trying to survive the harsh conditions and bad decision-making of their guide. The actress has always had a knack for embodying enigmatic characters, and Reichardt and her brilliantly illuminate this one beyond what’s on the page.

Their collaboration is also able to leave room for mystery and curiosity. When asked about Williams, Reichardt said, “What actors do still remains very mysterious to me.” There’s very clearly a rare and deep trust between the director and actress that each has the best interests of the character and story at heart. In Certain Women, Williams appears in the middle section of this collection of three short stories as a frustrated woman building a new home in Montana for her family. Although the weakest of the three stories, Williams and Reichardt create a fully realized character in a small amount of screen time.

If there’s a link between the Williams characters in Reichardt’s movies, it’s survivors struggling under the weight of economic anxiety, expectations, and hard choices. This arises most clearly in their most recent film together, Showing Up. Lizzy (Williams) is a little-known sculptor with an upcoming art show and a neglectful landlord. We feel for Lizzy and her frustrations, but the Reichardt-Williams combo never pleads for our sympathies. In their movies, complex character studies always seem to arise naturally from everyday moments, not manufactured drama. Showing Up might be the most fitting collaboration between the two, because it’s about the artistic struggle on a smaller scale. Fear and exhaustion are constantly wearing these characters down, but they show up and do the work anyway.

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Links

• If you’re wondering which theatrical format to see Sinners in, Coogler has a very helpful explainer in this video.

• Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman will star in The Roses, a marriage comedy inspired by 1989’s The War of the Roses. See the pretty funny trailer here.