Top 10 Actor-Director Pairings
Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog
Herzog once walked 800 miles to visit a dying friend in Paris; she lived another eight years. Kinski had gifts too, mainly of driving directors as mad as he was. These two willful loons and dedicated artists were destined to collaborate and collide. Their first work together, the 1973 Aguirre, the Wrath of God, took both men deep into the South American jungle to evoke the origins of colonial dementia. A great film, and so harrowing a mission they simply had to do it again, nine years later, with Fitzcarraldo. In rodentoid Max Schreck makeup, Kinski also starred in Herzog's remake of the 1922 Dracula film Nosferatu the Vampire. Like lovers whose mutual hatred is as monumental as their passion, the two had to break up after five films. Herzog later anatomized the doomed marriage in his wonderful documentary about Kinski: My Best Fiend.