Our pick of the 10 all-time greatest actor-director pairs.

Shutter Island (released last week) is the fourth collaboration between director Martin Scorsese and actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

Cinema has benefited from some great long-term collaborations between directors and actors. Here is our list of the greatest (minimum of four films together).

* Alfred Hitchcock and Cary Grant, Alfred Hitchcock and Grace Kelly, Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood, Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood,  Pedro Almodovar and Penelope Cruz, Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen, Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman, Billy Wilder and Jack Lemon, Marcello Mastroianni and Federico Fellini – all great collaborations that didn’t make the list. Before you start throwing tomatoes at the screen, relax: Some of the above simply didn’t meet the four-film requirement.

10. Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe

Collaborations: Gladiator, A Good Year, American Gangster, Body of Lies, Robin Hood

Typical Moods: Suspenseful, Rough, Captivating

What brings them together? They’re both kind of divas.

This pair started really strong with Gladiator, which won five Oscars (and an additional six nominations), including one for Russell Crowe. Then came A Good Year: A really nice film, but definitely not great. American Gangster was also good, and was nominated for two Oscars and three Golden Globes. Body of Lies put me to sleep although I wasn’t tired. The upcoming Robin Hood looks promising; I hope it will be comparable to Gladiator and not Scott’s latest Middle Ages attempt, Kingdom of Heaven…

9. Spike Lee and Denzel Washington

Collaborations: Mo’ Better Blues, Malcolm X, He Got Game, Inside Man

Typical Moods: Captivating, Thought Provoking

What brings them together? Both basketball fans

Mo’ Better Blues wasn’t especially good. Malcolm X got Denzel the Best Actor award at the Berlin Film Festival and nominations for a Golden Globe and an Oscar. Both Scorsese and Roger Ebert called it one of the greatest movies of the 90s. I loved He Got Game, but it’s not a cinematic masterpiece. Inside Man was one of the best movies of the 2000s, in my opinion. Their next collaboration is alarming: Inside Man 2?! And I thought Spike was immune from sequels’ spell.

8. Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio

Collaborations: Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island

Typical Moods: Captivating, Stylized

What brings them together? After seeing Titanic, Scorsese fell in love with him.

Only seven years in the making, this one might move ahead in a few years to the list of the best collaborations of all time. Strangely, there’s a conflict between the awards this collaboration won, and the quality of the movies. Gangs of New York got 10 Oscar nominations, The Aviator won 5 Oscars and was nominated for 6 more, The Departed won 4 Oscars including best director for Scorsese, who also won the Golden Globe for it, while DiCaprio was nominated for a Bafta and a Golden Globe. However, none of these three were Scorsese’s finest (can’t say the same about DiCaprio, as his acting is basically always the same, and not too superb, to put it mildly).

Will Shutter Island finally combine awards with quality? From reviews so far, it appears yet again not to be Scorsese’s greatest effort, though definitely a fresh attempt at a different formula.

7. Tim Burton and Johnny Depp

Major Collaborations: Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland

Typical Moods: Atmospheric, Offbeat, Humorous, Stylized

What brings them together? Opposites attract / weirdoes attract.

Seven collaborations so far: They must like each other very much. Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Sweeney Todd were all nominated for or won an Oscar. Alice in Wonderland, their up-coming, highly anticipated new collaboration, this time in 3D (coming out March 5th), is expected to be a great success.

6. Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune

Major Collaborations: Rashomon, Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo

Typical Moods: Suspenseful, Atmospheric, Bleak, Stylized

What brings them together? They both liked swords and black-and-white movies.

A little bit of international flavor is added by the greatest Japanese director who ever lived – Kurosawa, and the greatest Japanese actor who ever lived – Mifune. Together they made no less than sixteen films, including three classic masterpieces: the groundbreaking Rashomon; Seven Samurai, which was nominated for two Oscars, and of course Yojimbo, which also inspired Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood’s A Fistful of Dollars. Kurosawa even helped Mifune in his love life: Mifune and a girl called Sachiko Yoshimine fell in love, and wanted to get married. The girl’s parents were opposed to the marriage because of the social differences between the two. Kurosawa convinced the Yoshimine family to allow the marriage.

5. John Huston and Humphrey Bogart

Major Collaborations: The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, The African Queen

Typical Moods: Clever, Tense, Suspenseful, Rough

What brings them together? Whiskey, vodka, gin, rum and brandy.

What a collaboration! Bogart is probably the greatest man who ever lived (alongside Nelson Mandela and Hulk Hogan), and Huston not only gave birth to spectacular films, but also to the spectacular Anjelica Huston (with some help from his wife). The Maltese Falcon is regarded by many as the best Film-Noir ever made. Key Largo won an Oscar, The Treasure of Sierra Madre won three Oscars including Best Director, and the unforgettable The African Queen earned an Oscar for Bogart and was nominated for three more.

4. Alfred Hitchcock and James Stewart

Collaborations: Rope, Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo

Typical Moods: Tense, Mind Bending

What brings them together? They both loved blondes.

I had to make a choice: It was either Hitchcock and Grace Kelly, Hitchcock and Cary Grant or Hitchcock and James Stewart. I believe I made the right choice: Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Vertigo are three of cinema’s most known, quoted, loved and theorized about films. Hitchcock brought out the best of Stewart and vice versa.

3. Woody Allen and Woody Allen

Major Collaborations: Sleeper, Love and Death, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Zelig

Typical Moods: Humorous, Witty, Clever, Contemplative

What brings them together? They’re the same person.

There is only one person here, so where is the collaboration? The collaboration is between Woody Allen the director and Woody Allen the actor. Allen directed himself in no less than 28 films! 28 films that won three Oscars and were nominated for twelve; that had six Golden Globe nominations, seven Bafta awards and nine more Bafta nominations. An amazing record (and I didn’t count awards or nominations from movies in which Allen was only the actor or only the director). I think that the crowning glory of Allen and Allen’s partnership are Annie Hall and Zelig.

2. Clint Eastwood and Clint Eastwood

Major Collaborations: High Plains Drifter, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino

Typical Moods: Suspenseful, Rough, Exciting, Bleak

What brings them together? They were inseparable from birth

Like Woody Allen’s, here’s another case of collaboration by a person who directs himself. Clint Eastwood was director and actor in twenty-two films. It won him two Oscars and two Golden Globes (Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby). As in the case of Alfred Hitchcock, I had a conflict here too: Clint and Sergio Leone is a great collaboration, but they only did 3 movies together, and Clint and Don Siegel did six movies together, but only three of them were really good. So I went with Clint and Clint.

1. Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro

Major Collaborations: Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, Goodfellas, Casino

Typical Moods: Rough, Captivating, Disturbing, Suspenseful

What brings them together? They both love Tagliatelle Alla Boscaiola and Tortelloni Ricotta and Spinaci

These two made eleven movies together, in which they achieved the following amazing record: three Oscar wins and twenty-one nominations!!! Two Golden Globes and another twenty-two nominations!! No competition. Jordan and Pippen, Jay-Z and Beyonce, Pele and Garincha, Magic and Kareem and even Laurel and Hardy: They all pale in comparison to the partnership between Scorsese and De Niro.

When I first heard that one of the secrets to their success was that Scorsese and De Niro used to go out and drink together, I decided as an amateur director to take the stars of my movies out for a drink. It didn’t really help cinematically; we either ended throwing up, or made obscure phone calls in the middle of the night.

Today, it seems that Scorsese has dumped De Niro for a younger model, the more popular yet less talented Leonardo DiCaprio, and De Niro is stuck with Meet The Parents sequels. I wish they would make at least one more movie together to enter in cinema’s hall of fame. Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas already did.

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