The 17 Most Convincing Movie Couples
You know how Casablanca is going to end but can't help but hope it will turn out differently, no matter how much time goes by. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman mark the gold standard of onscreen couples.
"Wait," we hear you saying. "Can George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez really follow Casablanca?" Yes, they really kind of can — they're one of cinema's all-time most convincing couples. The scene between "Gary" and "Celeste" in the bar on the snowy night in Detroit is as intoxicating as that lone bourbon they share in this top-notch 1998 crime thriller.
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Their rich girl, poor boy dynamic wasn't new, but Titanic took the classic dynamic to the most soaring highs to the most crushing depths, turning a story about a doomed ship into a critique of class division, snobbery, and the idea of some having so much while others have so little.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet handled their roles with boundless grace and aplomb, and it was their chemistry, even more than the film's stunning sweep and visual effects, that made Titanic one of the highest-grossing films of all time. Talk about playing a wide range of couples: They also played sad marrieds losing their passion for life in Reservation Road, released just over a decade after Titanic.
They became a real-life, secret couple during the first Star Wars, though Harrison Ford was married to someone else and significantly older. (Ford was 33 and Carrie Fisher was 19 during their dalliance.)
The two channeled the smoldering force of their past relationship into a passionate will-they-or-won't-they galactic struggle that makes The Empire Strikes Back far and away the greatest Star Wars story. Lawrence Kasdan, who co-wrote 1980's The Empire Strikes Back and wrote and directed Body Heat, released a year later, has a real knack for crackling couples dialogue.
In the Mood for Love is one of the most gorgeous movies we've ever seen, thanks in part to the impossible dreamy sense of melancholy conveyed by its leads. Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung play neighbors who realize their spouses are cheating with each other. Though heartbroken — and drawn intensely to one another's considerable charms — they try desperately not to stoop to the level of their betrayers.
Nothing about this movie should work — the whole concept is pretty off-putting — and yet Richard Gere and Julia Roberts are both so off-the-charts magnetic that they sell this sex-worker-and-john love story as a total date-night charmer.
They're arguably the most enduring of all '90s movie couples.
Relative unknowns when The Princess Bride was released, Cary Elwes and Robin Wright made you believe in true love in their respective roles as farm boy Wesley and future princess Buttercup. Their exchange of commands and "as you wish" is more passionate than all the dialogue in a thousand lesser films.
They became one of the most beloved movie couples thanks to their witty repartee before Wesley went to sea, in the fire swamp, and even after her wedding and his death. (Don't worry, things work out OK.)
We still don't know what it means when Virginia (Annette Benning) tells Bugsy (Warren Beatty): ""Why don't you go outside and jerk yourself a soda?" But things just get more crackling from there. The chemistry was clearly real, because Beatty and Benning married in 1992 and have been together since.
Yes, we know some of you are going, "Bugsy? Not Bonnie and Clyde? But watch Bonnie and Clyde again: Clyde was no dynamo, romantically. Virginia and Bugsy are far more crackling as movie couples go.
Beatty's sister Shirley MacLaine knows all about onscreen sparks, too: It wasn't hard at all to see how Bud (Jack Lemmon) would risk his entire career to be with her adorable, deeply troubled Fran in the 1960 masterpiece The Apartment, a movie that still holds up strikingly well today.
There's a reason The Apartment, like two other films on this list, have a place on our list of Old Movies That Are Still an Absolute Pleasure to Watch. Bud and Fran are one of the easiest movie couples of all to root for.
Also? The Apartment is one of our 7 Best Christmas Movies in Disguise.
The real-life dynamic between the pairing makes the on-screen chemistry crackle even more. Janet Jackson was already a superstar, while Tupac Shakur was a rapper-actor on the rise who on paper didn't seem like her match. Yet Shakur's unbelievable charisma meant his character held his own and felt like a more-than-viable match for Justice (aka Janet — Miss Jackson if you're nasty).
Poetic Justice is a moving and thoughtful romance and road movie that is among the best by the late, great John Singleton.
A film that started with a lighthearted debate about whether men and women could be friends ends with a resounding answer: friendship is the basis for a love that lasts.
The move couple banter along the way is fabulous, thanks to perhaps the best Nora Ephron script of all. Billy Crystal as Harry and especially Meg Ryan as Sally will change the way you order in restaurants forever.
It was also lovely to see them reunite for the Oscars on Sunday to present the Best Picture Oscar to Anora, which also introduces a great movie couple.
One of the best things about Good Will Hunting is how different Will (Damon) and Skylar (Driver) seem to be – doesn't that always seem to be the way with actual couples who somehow make it work?
We love how they're impressed with each other's intellects, but also share a gross joke once in a while. And we think all the time about Will's proposal that they meet up for a couple of caramels. When two people actually like each other, the pretext — dinner, coffee, caramels — really makes no difference at all. We love this movie.
Ghost is an incredibly movie if you've ever lost someone — which almost everyone has. It's even more powerful, and painful, given the loss of Patrick Swayze.
As Sam and Molly, Swayze and Moore have one of the purest connections of all movie couples. It feels intense and vital before his passing — and even more intense as he longs to connect with her from the other side. Yes, the pottery wheel scene has been parodied a lot, but only because when it came out, it really worked.
Swayze also just had an on-screen earnestness and sweetness to him that felt effortless and real, and no one has quite matched it since.
Finally, it will always be funny to us that Jerry Zucker, one of the masterminds behind Airplane! — directed one of the most romantic scenes committed to film, and that his brother and Airplane! co-director David Zucker turned around and made fun of it in The Naked Gun 2 1/2.
If Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy seemed like a convincing couple onscreen, it's because they carried out a long love affair offscreen, as well — while appearing in nine films together, including 1942's Woman of the Year (above), their first production together.
A little bit of sneaking around kept things exciting: As a Catholic, Tracy did not want to divorce his wife, Louise. But after Louise Tracy's death in 1983, Hepburn acknowledged the decades-long open secret of her and Spencer Tracy's love.
Their final film together was the 1967 classic Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Tracy died shortly after its completion.
Despite their obvious onscreen magnetism in The Notebook, Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams didn't always get along.
At one point, director Nick Cassevetes has said, "they were really not getting along one day on set. Really not. And Ryan came to me, and there's 150 people standing in this big scene, and he says, 'Nick, come here.' And he's doing a scene with Rachel and he says, 'Would you take her out of here and bring in another actress to read off camera with me? ... I can't do it with her. I'm just not getting anything from this.'"
Anyone who has seen the time-spanning romance know that their passion for their work translated into passion onscreen. And Gosling and McAdams ended up dating for two years after the film's 2004 release.
The straight actors managed to deeply invest all kinds of audiences in this beautiful and deeply tragic cowboy romance that made an incredibly compelling case for same-sex marriage.
Though it didn't land Best Picture at the 2006 Oscars, Ang Lee did receive a much-deserved Best Director Oscar for bringing us one of the most tragic movie couples. (Among the people Lee beat: George Clooney.)
We've said it before and we'll say it again: You can watch all the erotic thrillers you like and you won't find anything hotter than the phone scene in It's a Wonderful Life, featuring one of the greatest movie couples, Donna Reed and Jimmy Stewart.
It's a great watch this time of year — or any time of year.
Dr. No follows James Bond (Sean Connery) as he goes to Jamaica to investigate the death of MI6 station chief John Strangways. But that's just an excuse to bring him together with Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress), because their chemistry is sizzling.'He was very protective towards me, he was adorable, fantastic,' Andress said in a 2020 interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera after Connery's death at 90. 'He adored women, He was undoubtedly very much a man.'
She added: "We spent many evenings together and he would invite me everywhere, Monte Carlo, London, New York, from when we met until now we always remained friends. Friends, friends.''
Maybe you'll like this list of '90s Rom-Coms That Will Have You at Hello.
Main image: Dr No. United Artists
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Chicago Tribune
an hour ago
- Chicago Tribune
Editorial: Lucas museum amps up. The LA excitement could have been happening in Chicago.
Ever since Chicago spurned the Lucas museum, which would have been funded by at least $800 million in philanthropic investments from 'Star Wars' icon George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson, a Chicago native, city snobs have pushed two narratives: one that the museum would never get built and another that it would not be any good if and when it did. Both of them are proving to be nonsense, as was obvious to us from the start. Back in 2016, Chicago lost a fully funded cultural attraction that would have drawn attention and visitors from all over the world. This was a Midwestern mistake for the ages. On Sunday, Lucas showed up for the first time ever at Comic-Con in San Diego to get people excited about the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. (Did we mention this could have been in Chicago?) He appeared alongside Oscar winners Guillermo del Toro and Doug Chiang on a panel hosted by Oscar nominee Queen Latifah. Do you routinely see such folks strolling down Michigan Avenue? Not since Oprah Winfrey left, you don't. Samuel L. Jackson narrated the 'sizzle reel,' promoting the museum. To say the Lucas appearance was a hot ticket is to understate. What will be in the 300,000-square-foot museum once it opens on its 11-acre campus in Los Angeles' Exposition Park next year? Paintings by Frida Kahlo, Maxfield Parrish, Kara Lewis and Norman Rockwell, comic book art from R. Crumb and Jack Kirby, original Peanuts and Flash Gordon comic strips, a fresco panel by Diego Rivera, illustrations by E.H. Shepard for 'The House at Pooh Corner.' The comic book covers that introduced Iron Man and Flash Gordon. Concept art from 'Indiana Jones.' A life-sized Naboo starfighter. That's just a taste. There will be, to say the least, a lot of interest in all those things. Chicago failed to understand what Lucas meant by 'narrative art.' But it's really not hard: his museum will be made up of the art to which people feel emotional connections and which forms much of the basis of our shared culture. The Lucas museum will be distinct from traditional art museums and will draw accordingly. Del Toro said Sunday that he, too, will likely deposit his own formidable collection of populist narrative art within the museum. Lucas called his decade-long endeavor 'a temple to the people's art.' The people's art. Chicago would have been its natural home. The dithering and naysaying that these days seems to come with doing anything substantial in this town lost us a potential jewel. What a colossal missed opportunity.
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an hour ago
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