COUPLES CASTING

From Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling to Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, a Guide to the Most Persistent Cinematic Couples

by Brooke Marine

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Silver Linings Playbook/YouTube

Once Hollywood discovers that two stars have good onscreen chemistry, they don’t let it go. (See Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy or Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, for example.) Sometimes, though, these actors are not actual couples in real life, they just look really, really good together, and Hollywood has no shame in replicating a film’s on-screen romance to cast the couple opposite one another again in a completely unrelated film. As Oscar favorites Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones gear up to play an onscreen couple again in Amazon Studios’ The Aeronauts, take a look back at some other Hollywood favorites–from Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling to Julia Roberts and Richard Gere–who tend to repeatedly play romantic leads opposite one another. Just remember: they’re not real-life couples, they just play them on screen—again and again (and sometimes again).

1Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne

Eddie Redmayne won the Best Actor Academy Award for his performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything and Felicity Jones was nominated for playing Hawking’s wife, Jane. The two will join one another on set as a couple again for the upcoming Amazon Studios film, The Aeronauts, about 19th century scientists who travel by hot air balloon.

2Armie Hammer and Alicia Vikander

While Alicia Vikander may have just wed her The Light Between Oceans costar Michael Fassbender, she and Armie Hammer are on-screen soulmates. The actors will team up again in Freakshift as misfit cops, and previously starred in the 2015 international spy flick, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

3Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper

Director David O. Russell loves to cast Jennifer Lawrence opposite Bradley Cooper, and has done so for three of his films—Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle and Joy. Lawrence and Cooper also starred opposite one another in Susanne Bier’s Serena.

4Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling

Before they twirled across the city of angels in La La Land, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling were cast as love interests in the romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid, Love.

5Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller

The teenage rom-com The Spectacular Now had a stellar cast—Brie Larson, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Bob Odenkirk, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kyle Chandler each played important roles in the film—but it also marked the beginning of a working relationship between Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller, who later went on to star in the Divergent franchise together.

6Julia Roberts and Richard Gere

9 years after starring in Pretty Woman, Richard Gere and Julia Roberts reunited on screen in Runaway Bride. Both romantic comedies were directed by Garry Marshall.

7Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet

Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio followed up their Titanic romance by portraying of an unhappily married couple in the 2008 adaptation of Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road.

8Diane Lane and Richard Gere

Richard Gere and Diane Lane have portrayed onscreen couples thrice—first in The Cotton Club, again in Unfaithful—a role for which Lane was nominated for an Oscar—and once more in Nicholas Sparks’ Nights in Rodanthe.