Our Favorite Hollywood Pairings

Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn made a memorable couple.

Hollywood has had many great pairings. Plenty of actors who have appeared in more than one movie together. Rare, however, is the couple that seems to really belong together on screen. A great screen couple can raise an average movie to higher heights than it deserves. They can imbue it with romance or friction that the writers could never create, let alone imagine. In short, some onscreen couples have that indescribable chemistry that makes any movie more than what it would otherwise be. Here are our favorite onscreen couples.

Eric: Katharine Hepburn did some of her best work opposite Spencer Tracy, but I always thought she had better on screen spark with Cary Grant. Hepburn and Grant both carried themselves in similar manners. They grace the screen like accessible royalty. They seemed liked two sides of the same coin.

Hepburn and Grant first worked together in the forgettable Sylvia Scarlett in 1935. In Holiday (1938) and The Philadelphia Story (1940), both play flawed, upper crust sophisticates. They bounce brilliantly off each other in the hilarious Bringing up Baby (1938). Hepburn plays an annoying loud mouth in love with Grants slightly dizzy scientist. Their character's are different but they are opposites who obviously attract

They both had amazing careers away from each other, but put together, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant were the greatest movie star team up ever.

Scott: It’s much rarer in modern films for an onscreen couple to appear inmore than one movie together unless it’s a sequel. But during the1990s, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, two of the biggest stars of that decade, did just that in three separate movies.

First there was the vastly under-rated Joe vs. the Volcano (1990)where Meg Ryan got to show off her diversity by playing threeseparate roles. Although it tanked critically and financially, thisis an undiscovered comic gem for those with a slightly eccentricsense of humor.

Then in 1993, they were again paired for the far more successfulSleepless in Seattle, although they really only have the one scenetogether at the film’s end when they finally meet atop the EmpireState Building.

Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford only made one movie together, but what a movie!

Their last appearance together so far, was in 1998’s You’ve GotMail. This was another movie that was overlooked by audiences andcritics alike, but one that I’ve always enjoyed. Although it takesmost of the movie for them to get together, unlike Sleepless, theydo get to appear together throughout the movie’s length.

I’m not sure why repeat onscreen couplings have faded from vogue,but for a few years at least, thanks to Hanks and Ryan, the conceptwas revived.

Patrick: Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford made only one movie together, The Way We Were. But in it they demonstrate one of the greatest-opposites attracts- romances ever. Not to mention more genuine romantic spark than should be legal. They were perfectly castafter all. He being the golden boy WASP and she the politically driven Jewish outsider. Hubbell Gardner and Katie Morosky go fromIvy League college days in the 1930's, through a love affair andmarriage in New York City during the closing days of WWII, and culminating in a clash of personalities, styles, and most of all, politics in Hollywood, CA. The famous chance encounter yearslater in the 1950's outside of the Plaza Hotel is one of the greatest endings in movie history. In the end all they have are those "misty water colored mem'ries..."