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Romantic Film Pairings for Valentine's Day

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Love is in the air, as we recall some of the great romantic teams in screen history. So, why not spend your Valentine's Day with a special meal for two and a double bill guaranteed to make you fall in love with film all over again.

As performers weren't identified until Florence Lawrence became the first film star in 1910, it wasn't possible to put a name to the faces on the silver screen. But romantic teams like Florence Turner and Maurice Costello slowly began to emerge, while the likes of Henry B. Walthall regularly paired off with Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish, in the latter case most notably in DW Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). Moreover, a number of enduring partnerships during this period weren't seen as 'romantic', as love was not the primary focus of the films in which they featured. That said, Charlie Chaplin frequently mooned over Edna Purviance in the 33 pictures they made between A Night Out (1915) and Limelight (1952). They can all be found among the various collections available from Cinema Paradiso, but their most poignant outings were The Immigrant (1917) and The Kid (1921), while Chaplin produced A Woman of Paris (1923) as a gift to his favourite leading lady.

Silent Swooning

While Chaplin was nobody's idea (but his own) of a romantic hero, women everywhere swooned at the mere mention of the name of the ultimate Latin Lover. During the course of his tragically short career, Rudolph Valentino was twice teamed with Nita Naldi in Fred Niblo's Blood and Sand (1922) and Joseph Henabery's Cobra (1925) and three times with Vilma Banky in George Melford's The Sheik (1921), Clarence Brown's The Eagle (1925) and George Fitzmaurice's The Son of the Sheik (1926). However, the Hungarian-born Banky was better known for her five collaborations with British leading man Ronald Colman, including Henry King's The Magic Flame (1927).

A still from Singin' in the Rain (1952) With Jean Hagen And Millard Mitchell
A still from Singin' in the Rain (1952) With Jean Hagen And Millard Mitchell

Under the tutelage of producer Samuel Goldwyn, Colman and Banky's popularity rivalled that of the greatest romantic team of the silent era, Greta Garbo and John Gilbert who smouldered in such silents as Clarence Brown's Flesh and the Devil and A Woman of Affairs. Yet, when Garbo insisted on their reunion in Rouben Mamoulian's Queen Christina (1932), their ardour had cooled and Gilbert drifted into obscurity before his death at just 38 in 1936. It's often said that Gilbert's star waned because his speaking voice failed to match his dashing image and Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen based the Dancing Cavalier sequences in Singin' in the Rain (1952) on Gilbert's insistently earnest repetition of the phrase 'I love you' to Catherine Dale Owen in Lionel Barrymore's His Glorious Night (1929).

Another silent pairing made Oscar history, as Janet Gaynor not only became the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress, but she also became the only woman to win for her work in multiple roles. She co-starred with George O'Brien in FW Murnau's Sunrise (1927), but found herself in the more familiar company of Charles Farrell in 7th Heaven (1927) and Street Angel (1928), which were both directed by Frank Borzage, who guided 'America's favourite lovebirds' through two more features, Lucky Star (1929) and Liliom (1930). Farrell would also work with Murnau in partnership with Mary Duncan in City Girl (1930), while Gaynor went on to earn a second Oscar nomination opposite Fredric March in William A. Wellman's original version of A Star Is Born (1937), which has since been dusted down by George Cukor for Judy Garland and James Mason (1954), Frank Pierson for Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson (1976) and Bradley Cooper for himself and Lady Gaga in the 2018 update, which is coming soon to DVD, Blu-ray and 4K.

Talking of Love

The coming of sound transformed screen love-making, as audiences could now eavesdrop on the sweet nothings being whispered by their favourite pin-ups. Among the new breed of stars to emerge as talkies became the norm was Clark Gable, who was enthroned as 'the King of Hollywood' thanks to his performances in eight pictures with Joan Crawford between 1931 and 1940. The only one of their collusions currently available to rent is Robert Z. Leonard's Dancing Lady (1933), although their clench in Clarence Brown's Chained (1934) is one of the clipped kisses contained in the magnificent montage at the end of Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso (1988).

Among the other featured pictures available from the site of the same name are Charles Chaplin's The Gold Rush (1925), Frank Borzage's A Farewell to Arms, Edmund Goulding's Grand Hotel (both 1932), William Keighley's The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Howard Hawks's His Girl Friday (1940) and The Outlaw (1943, with Howard Hughes), Victor Fleming's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1941), Luchino Visconti's Ossessione (1942), La terra trema (1948), Bellissima (1951) and Senso (1954), and Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946).

Gable also made six films at MGM with blonde bombshell Jean Harlow, most notably Red Dust (1932). She was engaged to William Powell at the time of her tragically early death and starred with him in comedies like Jack Conway's Libeled Lady (1936), which also featured Myrna Loy ('the Queen of Hollywood'), who made 14 films with Powell, including Robert Z. Leonard's The Great Ziegfeld (1936). However, as Richard Schickel recalls in his 1990 documentary, Alias Nick and Nora, Powell and Loy were best known for their portrayal of those bibulously chic sleuths Nick and Nora Charles in WS Van Dyke's The Thin Man (1934), After the Thin Man (1936), Another Thin Man (1939) and Shadow of the Thin Man (1941), Richard Thorpe's The Thin Man Goes Home (1944) and Edward Buzzell's Song of the Thin Man (1947).

At a time when stars signed exclusive contracts, the studios frequently experimented with pairings in the hope of hitting box-office gold. At Warners, for example, George Brent was teamed with wife Ruth Chatterton, as well as Kay Francis and Bette Davis, with whom he made William Wyler's Jezebel (1938) and Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory (1939) and The Great Lie (1941). Never one to suffer fools gladly, Davis was rarely reunited with her co-stars. However, she forged a bond with Leslie Howard in John Cromwell's Of Human Bondage (1934) and Archie Mayo's The Petrified Forest (1936) and It's Love I'm After (1937).

Warners also brought James Cagney and Ann Sheridan together for Michael Curtiz's Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), Anatole Litvak's City of Conquest and William Keighley's Torrid Zone (both 1940). Among the other duos to find fan favour during this period were Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert, James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, and Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, who brought a romantic spark to the eight action pictures they made together at Warners. In addition to the aforementioned The Adventures of Robin Hood and Raoul Walsh's They Died With Their Boots On (1941), they also co-starred in the Michael Curtiz sextet of Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), Four's a Crowd (1938), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), Dodge City (1939) and Santa Fe Trail (1940).

Over at RKO, the peerless pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers had been thrown together by chance in Thornton Freeland's Flying Down to Rio (1933). Such was their chemistry in the climactic production number, 'The Carioca', that a dance craze swept America and the front office hurriedly reunited the duo in Mark Sandrich's The Gay Divorcee (1934), in which their partnership was sealed as they glided across the floor to Cole Porter's 'Night and Day'. They seemed destined to dance together, with fellow RKO contractee Katharine Hepburn declaring 'she gave him sex, and he gave her class'.

A still from Fred and Ginger: Follow the Fleet (1936)
A still from Fred and Ginger: Follow the Fleet (1936)

Yet Ginger and Fred only played the romantic leads in three musicals - Sandrich's Top Hat (1935) and Shall We Dance (1937), and George Stevens's Swing Time (1936) - while Sandrich's Carefree (1938) was more of a screwball comedy with a smattering of song-and-dance numbers. Elsewhere, they merely provided dapper support in William A. Seiter's Roberta (1935) and Sandrich's Follow the Fleet (1936), while they were already married in HC Potter's The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939) and Charles Walters's The Barkleys of Broadway (1949).

Ginger and Fred weren't the only match made in musical heaven, however. Warners united Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, who crooned merrily together in the likes of Lloyd Bacon's 42nd Street (1933), which featured spectacular dance routines choreographed by Busby Berkeley. Examples of these can be found on compilations like Hollywood Singing and Dancing (Part 4), which also include clips of 'singing sweethearts' Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, who made operetta mainstream with hits like WS Van Dyke's Rose-Marie (1936).

Across the MGM lot, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland could often be found putting on a show in such Berkeley jamborees as Babes in Arms (1939), although they also teamed in such non-musicals as George B. Seitz's Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938). Garland was also frequently teamed with Gene Kelly after he debuted alongside her in Berkeley's For Me and My Gal (1942). But, while they made sweet music in Vincente Minnelli's The Pirate (1948) and Charles Walters's Summer Stock (1950), they were prevented from reuniting in the latter's Easter Parade (1948) by Kelly breaking his ankle and having to be replaced by Fred Astaire.

Kelly also joined forces with coloratura soprano Kathryn Grayson on George Sidney's Thousands Cheer (1943) and Anchors Aweigh (1945), while also buckling on a swash alongside June Allyson in George Sidney's The Three Musketeers (1948). While Grayson would go on to team several times with tenor Mario Lanza and would appear alongside Allyson in Richard Thorpe's Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), the latter forged partnerships with Van Johnson (Two Girls and a Sailor, 1944) and James Stewart (The Glenn Miller Story, 1954).

Over at 20th Century-Fox, the duo dynamics were more fluid, with Don Ameche and Tyrone Power being mixed and matched with the studio's various musical and dramatic stars. Ice skating sensation Sonja Henie figured with Ameche in One in a Million (1936) and with Power in Second Fiddle (1939), which were both directed by Sidney Lanfield. Singer Alice Faye had both men dancing to her tune in the Henry King duo of In Old Chicago and Alexander's Ragtime Band (both 1938), while she got Ameche to herself in Irving Cummings's That Night in Rio (1941). However, he was two-timing her with Betty Grable in Cummings's Down Argentine Way (1940) and Walter Lang's Moon Over Miami (1941). But few got around as much as Power, who had dalliances with Loretta Young, Linda Darnell (The Mark of Zorro, 1940 & Blood and Sand, 1941), Maureen O'Hara (The Black Swan, 1942 & The Long Gray Line, 1954), and Anne Baxter (Crash Dive, 1943 & The Luck of the Irish, 1948).

Battles of the Sexes

It wasn't always lovey-dovey in Hollywood romantic movies, however, with the screwball comedy style often allowing the female lead to give as good as she got. No one epitomised this sense of free-spirited equatability more than Katharine Hepburn, who had breezed through such Cary Grant romcoms as George Cukor's Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Holiday (1938) and The Philadelphia Story (1940), as well as Howard Hawks's enduringly hilarious Bringing Up Baby (1938). However, she found Spencer Tracy a tougher nut to crack, as their reported opening exchange on the set of George Stevens's Woman of the Year (1942) suggests. On realising she was only two inches shorter than her co-star, the patrician Hepburn remarked, 'I'm afraid I am a little tall for you, Mr. Tracy,' 'Don't worry, Miss Hepburn,' he rapidly replied, 'I'll cut you down to my size.'

A still from Desk Set (1957)
A still from Desk Set (1957)

They would go on to make eight more films together while conducting an off-screen romance that remained unofficial, as Tracy was a Catholic who couldn't get a divorce from his wife. Following Cukor's timely, but sombre drama, Keeper of the Flame (1942), Hepburn and Tracy reunited on Harold S. Bucquet's Without Love (1945) and Elia Kazan's The Sea of Grass (1947) before re-discovering their comic touch in Frank Capra's State of the Union (1948), Cukor's Adam's Rib (1949) and Pat and Mike (1942), and Walter Lang's Desk Set (1957). Tracy died shortly after completing Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), which brought Hepburn the third of her four Oscars for Best Actress.

Greer Garson won the same award for her performance in William Wyler's wartime classic, Mrs Miniver (1942), which marked the second of her eight films with Walter Pidgeon (far too few of which are available on DVD in this country). By contrast with Garson and Pidgeon's cosy conventionality, there was a Technicolor exoticism to the six pictures made at Universal by Jon Hall and Maria Montez, who squeezed Robert Siodmak's gleeful fantasy, Cobra Woman (1944), between John Rawlins's Arabian Nights (1942) and Arthur Lubin's Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944).

The gaudy gloss was replaced by sinister shadow for the noir trio of Frank Tuttle's This Gun for Hire, Stuart Heisler's The Glass Key (both 1942) and George Marshall's The Blue Dahlia (1946), which proved to be the standouts of the seven-film collaboration between Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, who did for Paramount what Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell did for RKO in John Farrow's His Kind of Woman (1951) and Josef von Sternberg's Macao (1952), and Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall did for Warners in their equally uncompromising quartet of Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not (1944) and The Big Sleep (1946), Delmer Daves's Dark Passage (1947) and John Huston's Key Largo (1948).

Two more husband-and-wife teams emerged as the 1950s progressed. But, while Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh parted company after completing Rudolph Maté's The Black Shield of Falworth (1954), Richard Fleischer's The Vikings (1958) and George Sidney's Who Was That Lady? (1960), Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward remained a fixture for half a century after they met while making Martin Ritt's adaptation of William Faulkner's novel, The Long Hot Summer (1958). In addition to co-starring in the same director's Paris Blues (1961), Mitchell Shavelson's A New Kind of Love (1963), James Goldstone's Winning (1969) and James Ivory's Mr and Mrs Bridge (1990), Newman also directed Woodward in Rachel Rachel (1968), The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1972), The Shadow Box (1980) and The Glass Menagerie (1987).

The friendship between Rock Hudson and Doris Day comes under scrutiny in Mark Rappaport's Rock Hudson's Home Movies (1992). They had met while making Michael Gordon's Pillow Talk (1959), which had transformed Day from an apple-pie singing star into a chic comedienne. Indeed, so successful was the format of pitching Day's independent career woman into a battle of the sexes with Hudson's shameless chauvinist that producer Ross Hunter reworked it in Delbert Mann's Lover Come Back (1961) and Norman Jewison's Send Me No Flowers (1964), while Day played similar characters opposite James Garner in Gordon's Move Over, Darling and Jewison's The Thrill of It All (both 1963) and Rod Taylor in Ralph Levy's Do Not Disturb (1965) and Frank Tashlin's The Glass Bottom Boat (1966).

Kissing With Stiff Upper Lips

The first British lovebirds to make an impression with audiences in the 1910s were actor-director Henry Edwards and Chrissie White, who were followed in the 1920s by the likes of Guy Newall and Ivy Duke. However, the first power couple of British drama were Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, who became the toast of the West End, while also uniting for the occasional screen venture after they became lovers while making William K. Howard's Fire Over England (1937). Their chemistry is readily evident in Basil Dean's 21 Days (1940), but fate conspired to prevent them from also teaming in William Wyler's Wuthering Heights (1939), Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Mervyn LeRoy's Waterloo Bridge and Robert Z. Leonard's Pride and Prejudice (all 1940). However, they did co-star for a final time as Horatio Nelson and Emma Hamilton in Alexander Korda's That Hamilton Woman (1941), which Winston Churchill claimed was crucial in persuading the American public to join the fight against Fascism.

The war years also saw James Mason and Margaret Lockwood forge a formidable partnership in a pair of Gainsborough bodice-rippers, Leslie Arliss's The Man in Grey (1943) and The Wicked Lady (1945). Peacetime brought the teaming of Anna Neagle and Michael Wilding in a series of London-based films between Piccadilly Incident (1946) and Derby Day (1952), which were directed by her husband, Herbert Wilcox, who also guided the duo through The Lady With a Lamp (1951), in which Neagle played Florence Nightingale.

Also popular around this period were the husband-and-wife team of Michael Dennison and Dulcie Gray, who appeared in over 100 West End plays during their 60-year marriage, as well as such films as Henry Cass's The Glass Mountain (1949) and George More O'Ferrall's Angels One Five (1952). Another Mr and Mrs duo were Derek Farr and Muriel Pavlow, who met on the set of Anthony Asquith's Quiet Wedding (1941) and went on to co-star in George King's The Shop At Sly Corner (1947) and Ralph Thomas's Doctor At Large (1957). The most prolific partnership in screen terms, however, were Googie Withers and John McCallum, whose 62-year union saw them appear together in 10 features, including Robert Hamer's It Always Rains on Sundays (1947), the aforementioned Derby Day and Tony Young's Port of Escape (1956), which was the last picture the pair made in the UK before emigrating to McCallum's native Australia.

A still from Prudence and the Pill (1968)
A still from Prudence and the Pill (1968)

Although they weren't strictly a romantic team, David Niven and Deborah Kerr made a number of films together, with the former winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as a disgraced soldier opposite Kerr's mousy mother's girl in Delbert Mann's adaptation of Terence Rattigan's play, Separate Tables (1958). The same year saw them driven apart by the capricious Jean Seberg in Otto Preminger's polished version of Françoise Sagan's bestseller, Bonjour Tristesse. But tongues were firmly in cheeks when Niven and Kerr reunited as Sir James Bond and Mimi, the SMERSH agent posing as M's widow, in the multi-directed spoof derived from Ian Fleming's Casino Royale (1967). The tone was equally wry in Fielder Cook's Prudence and the Pill (1968), a permissive society satire that sees complications arise when Kerr cheats on Niven's stuffy banker, who has replaced her contraceptive pills with aspirin.

Jack Warner would never get up to such shenanigans with either of his regular screen wives. Although they shared several credits, Warner was only married to Gladys Henson in the 'Engine Driver' episode of Train of Events (1949) and in Basil Dearden's The Blue Lamp (1950). However, he found himself wed to Kathleen Harrison on five occasions, as they reunited in Vernon Sewell's Home and Away (1956) after playing Joe and Ethel in the four Ken Annakin films contained in The Huggetts Collection: Holiday Camp (1947); Here Come the Huggetts (1948); Vote for Huggett; and The Huggetts Abroad (both 1949). A fifth entry, Christmas With the Huggetts, was abandoned, although Warner and Harrison continued to play the couple on the radio between 1953-62.

By the time the series ended, the face of British comedy had been much altered by the likes of Tony Hancock, The Goons and the Carry On movies. Over the years, Sidney James was often shacked up with Hattie Jacques (Cabby, 1963; Loving, 1970; and At Your Convenience, 1971) or Joan Sims (Cowboy, 1965; Up the Khyber, 1968; & Abroad, 1972). But it was Barbara Windsor who set his pulse racing in Carry On Camping, Carry On Again Doctor (both 1969), Carry On Henry (1971) and Carry On Dick (1974), which were all directed by Gerald Thomas.

The Tudor romp reused sets prepared for Charles Jarrott's Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), which had earned Richard Burton an Oscar nomination for his performance as Henry VIII. In all, the Welshman would be shunned on seven separate occasions, most gallingly for his work in Mike Nichols's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), which saw spouse Elizabeth Taylor win her second Academy Award for Best Actress. They had become smitten while making Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Cleopatra (1963) and the combination of their glamour, extravagance and combustibility resulted in them becoming the most famous couple in the world. Yet, while they collaborated on Burton and Nevill Coghill's Doctor Faustus, Franco Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew (both 1967), Joseph Losey's Boom (1968) and Les Orton and Andrew Sinclair's Under Milk Wood (1972), the camera never quite captured the passion that prompted the pair to marry twice and inspired Robert Laxton's BBC biopic, Burton and Taylor (2013), which starred Dominic West and Helena Bonham Carter.

Today's Twosomes

One of the quirkier partnerships of recent times saw onetime lovers Woody Allen and Diane Keaton muddle along together in Play It Again, Sam (1972), Sleeper (1973), Love and Death (1975), Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979) and Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993). While they remain friends, the same is most definitely not true in the case of Allen and Mia Farrow, who first worked together in A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982). Yet, while they romanced in their own fashion in Zelig (1983), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), Crimes and Misdemeanours (1989) and Shadows and Fog (1991), they were merely in-laws in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), while Allen contented himself with off-screen duties on The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Radio Days, September (both 1987), Another Woman (1988) and Alice (1990). However, Allen and Farrow have not been on speaking terms since the tense state of their relationship became apparent in Husbands and Wives (1992).

A still from By the Sea (2015) With Angelina Jolie And Melvil Poupaud
A still from By the Sea (2015) With Angelina Jolie And Melvil Poupaud

Among the other couples unlikely to work together again are Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, after their collaborations on Tony Scott's Days of Thunder (1990), Ron Howard's Far and Away (1992) and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999), and Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who parted equally acrimoniously after pairing on Doug Liman's Mr and Mrs Smith (2005) and By the Sea (2015), which Jolie wrote and directed. Sadly, it was the death of Alan Rickman that brought an end to his partnership with Emma Thompson after they had bonded on Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility (1995), Sebastian Gutierrez's Judas Kiss (1998) and Richard Curtis's Love Actually (2003), as well as on the Harry Potter series and Rickman's directorial debut, The Winter Guest (1997).

Rickman's voice can be heard as Absolem the butterfly in Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016), which is one of several collaborations between Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter in the films of Tim Burton, along with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride (both 2005), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Alice in Wonderland (2010) and Dark Shadows (2012), as well as in Gore Verbinski's The Lone Ranger (2013). While they make a striking couple, love is rarely on the cards between these two. Similarly, the billing and cooing was laced with plenty of screwball byplay in real-life couple Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell's teamings on Jonathan Demme's Swing Shift (1984) and Garry Marshall's Overboard (1987), as well as in Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner's outings as adventurer Jack Colton and novelist Joan Wilder in Robert Zemeckis's Romancing the Stone (1984) and Lewis Teague's Jewel of the Nile (1985). However, Douglas and Turner were at their best as the couple at the bitter end of an 18-year marriage in Danny DeVito's gleefully dark farce, The War of the Roses (1989).

It's not always been plain sailing for Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, but they seemed to manage to find a way to get together in John Patrick Shanley's Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) and Nora Ephron's Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and You've Got Mail (1998). However, their marriage was ended by Hanks's wartime death in Ithaca (2015), an adaptation of William Saroyan's The Human Comedy that marked Ryan's directorial debut. In some ways, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence are the millennial equivalent of Hanks and Ryan and they have certainly proved well matched in David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook (2012); American Hustle (2013) and Joy (2015), as well as Susanne Bier's Serena (2014). However, there's also a hint of Meg and Tom in the chemistry between Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, who followed an initial pairing in Glenn Ficarra's Crazy, Stupid, Love (2010), with a throwback to Bogart and Bacall in Ruben Fleischer's Gangster Squad (2013) and to Fred and Ginger in Damien Chazelle's La La Land (2016), which earned Gosling an Oscar nomination for Best Actor and Stone the statuette for Best Actress.

A still from The Fault in Our Stars (2014)
A still from The Fault in Our Stars (2014)

Good friends Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore have also made a habit of finding each other in the final reel in Frank Coraci's The Wedding Singer (1997) and Blended (2014) and Peter Segal's 50 First Dates (2004). As have such other three-time co-stars as Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder (Bram Stoker's Dracula, 1992; A Scanner Darkly, 2006; & Destination Wedding, 2018), Taraji P. Henson and Terrence Howard (Hustle and Flow; Animal, both 2005; & From the Rough, 2013), Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg (Adventureland, 2009; American Ultra, 2015; & Café Society, 2016), Mila Kunis and James Franco (Date Night, 2010; Third Person; & Oz: The Great and Powerful, both 2013), Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell (When in Rome, 2010; Hit and Run, 2012; & CHIPS, 2017), and Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort (The Fault In Our Stars; Divergent, both 2014; & Insurgent, 2015).

It's often said that the days of the romantic team are numbered, as stars are reluctant to work together too often for fear of typecasting. Moreover, unlike during the heyday of the studio system when the front office called the shots, the complexities of agent wheeler-dealing has also meant that it's trickier to bring stars together on a regular basis.

Nevertheless, Cinema Paradiso still has a number of tantalising match-ups to get you in the mood for love this Valentine's Day. Among them are Julia Roberts and Richard Gere (Pretty Woman, 1990 & Runaway Bride, 1999), Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves (Speed, 1994 & The Lake House, 2006), Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio (Titanic, 1997 & Revolutionary Road, 2008), Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, 2003 & Fool's Gold, 2008), Jamie Foxx and Kerry Washington (Ray, 2004 & Django Unchained, 2012), Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain, 2005 & Love & Other Drugs, 2010), Rachel McAdams and Owen Wilson (Wedding Crashers, 2005 & Midnight in Paris, 2011), Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan (Step Up, 2006 & 10 Years, 2011), Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara (Ain't Them Bodies Saints, 2008 & A Ghost Story, 2017), and Jon Hamm and Kristen Wiig (Bridesmaids & Friends With Kids, both 2011). Happy viewing!

A still from Friends with Kids (2011) With Jennifer Westfeldt And Adam Scott
A still from Friends with Kids (2011) With Jennifer Westfeldt And Adam Scott
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