Years apart made these superstars’ hearts grow fonder — mostly.

13 onscreen couples who reunited decades later

Years apart made these superstars' hearts grow fonder — mostly.

By Jesse Hassenger

June 1, 2026 10:30 a.m. ET

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NOT 'Pretty Woman,' NOT 'Bram Stoker's Dracula,' NOT 'Titanic'. Credit:

Paramount Pictures; Robb Rosenfeld/Regatta; Francois Duhamel/Dreamworks

One of the most poignant things cinema can do is capture, expand, and contract time. For movie stars, in particular, old films provide snapshots of their youth, old age, and everything in between.

This process becomes especially notable when two famous stars who played a beloved couple in a time-tested classic reunite onscreen after a long gap — like when Harrison Ford and Karen Allen as Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood came back together after 25 years in *Kingdom of the Crystal Skull* (2008), and again in *Dial of Destiny* (2023).

These later collaborations are informed by the audience’s memories of their past work together, lending an unspoken history to the characters and placing even minor films on a broader cinematic timeline.

It’s also just fun to see old movie couples rekindling their old chemistry! These decades-later experiments have been particularly frequent in the past 40 years, as actors have become less likely to retire (or stay retired) and more likely to keep searching for plum parts well into their golden years.

These 13 onscreen couples who reunited decades later were still able to find a spark, even when playing drastically different characters in very different circumstances.

Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy

'Woman of the Year' (1942) / 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' (1967).

Bettmann/Getty (2)

Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn didn't exactly need a personal reunion. Their quiet relationship — an open secret in Hollywood at the time — lasted for almost the entirety of their creative partnership, which began with six films in the 1940s, including classics *Woman of the Year *(1942) and *Adam’s Rib *(1949).

They made two more together in the 1950s, then took a decade-long work break between rom-com *Desk Set* (1957) and the social dramedy *Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner* (1967), which would prove to be Tracy’s final film.

The legendary actor died mere weeks after he finished shooting. Both he and Hepburn received Oscar nominations (and she won) as a proudly liberal couple whose beliefs are put to the test in the face of their daughter’s interracial relationship.

The pair may not have been apart onscreen for long, but audiences and Oscar voters clearly missed them.

Jane Fonda and Robert Redford

'Barefoot in the Park' (1967) / 'Our Souls at Night' (2017).

Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty; Kerry Brown/Netflix

For a little while, it seemed like Jane Fonda and Robert Redford would become regular screen partners. In just two years, they played both a married couple in *The Chase *(1966) and diametrically opposed newlyweds in the culture-clash rom-com *Barefoot in the Park *(1967).

But they waited more than a decade to reunite for *The Electric Horseman* (1979), quickly rekindling their chemistry as a surly cowboy who goes rogue to protect a horse and the reporter who accompanies him. (It’s sort of an *It Horsened One Night* situation.)

As the years passed, both powerhouse stars became increasingly selective about their movie choices. Redford started moving behind the camera (not to mention founding and building the Sundance Film Festival), while Fonda focused on activism and fitness, leaving acting behind for a decade and a half. There was hardly an opportunity for a reunion — Redford, tragically, never cameoed in *Jane Fonda's Workout*.

Finally, a full 38 years after their last onscreen romance, the old friends re-teamed for *Our Souls at Night *(2017), a low-key and plainspoken story of late-in-life friendship turning to something more.

Harrison Ford and Karen Allen

'Raiders of the Lost Ark' (1981) / 'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny' (2023).

Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty; Lucasfilm/Disney

The blockbuster success of *Raiders of the Lost Ark* (1981) cemented Harrison Ford’s status as one of the biggest stars of his generation. As Indiana Jones' love interest Marion Ravenwood, Karen Allen also earned acclaim.

Allen went on to play the romantic lead in films like John Carpenter’s *Starman *(1984) and *Scrooged *(1988), and delivered strong supporting turns in high-profile movies like *Malcolm X *(1992) and *The Sandlot *(1993), as well as Steven Soderbergh’s underseen *King of the Hill *(1993). At the turn of the century, she appeared in the ensembles of *The Perfect Storm *(2000) and Best Picture nominee *In the Bedroom *(2001).

Still, for all of her success, Allen would forever be Marion to a generation of filmgoers. Fans were delighted, then, when she reprised the character alongside Ford's Indy in 2008's *Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull* (2008). As a bonus, the characters got one final go-around in *Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny *(2023).

Sure, they're nobody’s favorite Indy movies, but it sure was nice to have those postscripts confirming that Marion and Indy were ultimately the loves of each other’s lives.

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Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas

'Romancing the Stone' (1984) / 'The War of the Roses' (1989).

Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty; Francois Duhamel/20th Century Fox

Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas first teamed up in *Romancing the Stone, *a swashbuckling action-romance that proved to be one of the biggest hits of 1984.

Five years later, they about-faced for *The War of the Roses, *playing a bitter couple swept up in a vicious divorce battle. It put a pretty strong period at the end of that sentence, but 30 years later, they added a small-screen postscript, with Turner playing the ex-wife of Douglas’ character on Netflix's *The Kominsky Method*.

Their tart banter in the Netflix hit doesn't rise to the toxic levels of their *Roses *relationship; in fact, the characters’ relationship ends on a more bittersweet and reflective note, as opposed to the movie’s grim comeuppance.

Julia Roberts and Richard Gere

'Pretty Woman' (1990) / 'Runaway Bride' (1999).

Ron Batzdorff; Paramount Pictures

Julia Roberts and Richard Gere bookended the 1990s with a pair of Garry Marshall-directed romantic comedies. Fortunately, they were savvy enough to avoid sequels. Rather than following their surprise smash* Pretty Woman *(1990) with an ill-advised return to characters who already had their fairy-tale ending, Roberts and Gere re-teamed with Marshall for an unrelated film with a more classic screwball premise.

In *Runaway Bride* (1999), Roberts plays a woman with a habit of leaving men at the altar and Gere plays a reporter on a mission to figure her out. It didn’t prove quite as iconic or lasting, but it was a huge hit that served as a delightful companion piece to their first outing.

Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves

'Bram Stoker's Dracula' (1992) / 'Destination Wedding' (2018).

Robb Rosenfeld/Regatta; Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

The chemistry between Mina (Winona Ryder) and her husband, Jonathan (Keanu Reeves), in *Bram Stoker’s Dracula* (1992) is not exactly *electric*, but that’s by design. Mina is seduced by a shapeshifting, lovelorn vampire while Jonathan is waylaid by the count’s sexy (and horrific) brides at his Transylvanian castle.

But the Gen-X icons reportedly got along swimmingly and have long referred to each other as husband and wife because of their wedding scene. It’s appropriate, then, that they got back together 26 years later for another wedding.

*Destination Wedding* is a little-seen rom-com that pairs two misanthropic wedding guests who fall in hate at the airport, get to know each other on the flight, and gradually warm to one another over the course of the big day.

The film may be overwritten, but Reeves and Ryder are so charming and funny that it wins you over. Francis Ford Coppola’s Gothic monster saga may be the greater achievement, but *Destination Wedding* is the better showcase for these stars.

Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves

'Speed' (1994) / 'The Lake House' (2006).

Richard Foreman; Peter Sorel

Keanu Reeves declined to join Sandra Bullock for the ill-fated 1997 sequel to *Speed* (1994), but he later re-teamed with the actress for *The Lake House *(2006), a gentler romance about two people living in the same place at different points in time — somehow able to communicate through a magical mailbox.

It sounds more cutesy than it is. Reeves seems to have a soft spot for earnestly old-fashioned romantic melodramas. *The Lake House* is notable for how it captures the chemistry between its stars despite their rarely sharing the screen. If nothing else, it offers a very different approach to building a romance than the life-or-death mayhem of their first pairing.

Uma Thurman and John Travolta

'Pulp Fiction' (1994) / 'Be Cool' (2005).

Linda R. Chen; 20th Century Fox

Eleven years after they twisted the night away in *Pulp Fiction* (1994), Uma Thurman and John Travolta reunited for a sequel — just not to that particular movie. *Be Cool* (2005) is a decade-later follow-up to another Travolta-led ensemble crime comedy, *Get Shorty* (1995).

*Get Shorty *and *Be Cool *are adapted from novels by Elmore Leonard, who in turn influenced Quentin Tarantino’s work (and provided the source novel for his own *Pulp* follow-up, *Jackie Brown*), so it made sense enough for Thurman to jump on. What makes less sense is how ghastly *Be Cool* is compared to either of its predecessors (and that its most interesting performances are from Vince Vaughn and Dwayne Johnson).

Still, that’s not either actor’s fault. And they’ll always have the Jack Rabbit Slim’s dance floor (or, if you prefer, the floor of Eric Stoltz’s suburban home).

Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio

'Titanic' (1997) / 'Revolutionary Road' (2008).

Merie W. Wallace/Paramount; Francois Duhamel/Dreamworks

Perhaps the most subversive onscreen reunion of modern times brought together Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet for the first time in 11 years — this time casting the *Titanic* (1997) lovers in a doomed marriage.

Hopefully, the Rose and Jack shippers tempered their expectations before seeing Sam Mendes' *Revolutionary Road* (2008), which somehow achieves an even more devastating conclusion than *Titanic*. At least Rose got to live an extraordinary life after the death of her lover.

In *Revolutionary Road*, the two superstars play Frank and April, whose marriage curdles in the conformist 1950s suburbia. Though it takes many cues from Douglas Sirk, the movie is a blunt instrument, playing almost like a less satirical prequel to Mendes' *American Beauty. *

Winslet won the Best Actress Oscar for *The Reader* (2008), which was released within months of *Revolutionary Road*, but one could argue she deserved it even more for this performance (or, for that matter, for *Titanic*). She and DiCaprio go toe-to-toe in scenes that combine volcanic fury with trembling vulnerability.

Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler

'The Wedding Singer' (1998) / 'Blended' (2014).

New Line Cinema; Warner Bros.

Adam Sandler has starred alongside a number of A-list actresses over the years, including someone else from this list. Some are charming enough; others feel like they’re mostly just there as a flex.

But as onscreen romantic partners go, no one really “gets” the Sandman like Drew Barrymore, who perfectly matched his brokenhearted-goofball vibe in* The Wedding Singer* (1998), and reunited with him shortly thereafter for *50 First Dates *(2004).

A decade after that film, they made it a trilogy with *Blended *(2014), where an older Sandler and Barrymore play single parents whose families are accidentally paired during an exotic vacation. *Blended,* the weakest of the three, underperformed at the box office, hastening Sandler’s seemingly permanent move to making Netflix comedies.

The real surprise is that Barrymore hasn’t joined him for any of those — at least not yet. Doesn’t it seem like it’s about time for another date with Drew?

Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara

'Best in Show' (2000) / 'Schitt's Creek' season 6 (2020).

Doane Gregory/Online USA/Getty; PopTV

Comedians Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara’s first movie together was also, in its own way, a decades-later reunion. The pair met way back in the 1970s, as members of Toronto’s Second City sketch troupe.

They subsequently appeared on the troupe’s classic series *SCTV*, but didn’t share the big screen until *Waiting for Guffman *(1996), directed by Christopher Guest. For Guest’s follow-up, *Best in Show *(2000), they coupled up as dog owners Gerry and Cookie Fleck. A few years later, in *A Mighty Wind *(2003), they played the estranged folk (and romantic) duo Mitch & Mickey.

Though they both appeared in Guest’s *For Your Consideration *(2006), they didn’t play a couple again until the 2015 debut of *Schitt’s Creek*. As the formerly wealthy Johnny and Moira Rose, who are forced to downsize in a small Canadian town, they rekindled their comic chemistry and, especially in O’Hara’s case, earned much-deserved late-career acclaim.

George Clooney and Julia Roberts

'Ocean's Eleven' (2001) / 'Ticket to Paradise' (2022).

Warner Brothers/courtesy Everett Collection; Vince Valitutti / Universal Pictures

In *Ocean’s Eleven *(2001), Tess (Julia Roberts) spends much of the movie bitter at her ex-husband, Danny Ocean (George Clooney). Meanwhile, he’s concocting an elaborate casino robbery in the hopes of winning her back from the casino’s malevolent owner, Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia).

The two stars strike sparks in one famously contentious scene. (“You’re a thief and a liar," she declares. “I only lied about being a thief," he retorts.) But the movie revolves, of course, around the guys planning and executing their labyrinthine heist.

They reunited onscreen multiple times after the launch of the *Ocean’s* franchise. He was a CIA handler and she was a spy in Clooney’s directorial debut *Confessions of a Dangerous Mind *(2002), and they played a TV host and producer, respectively, in *Money Monster *(2016). But they finally paired up for a nice, traditional rom-com in 2022.

*Ticket to Paradise*, released 21 years after *Ocean's Eleven*, is just as spiky, albeit not as clever or witty. Clooney and Roberts play longtime exes who hate each other but wind up falling in love again (natch) while trying to derail their daughter’s wedding.

It goes down easy enough, but it’s not as effortlessly entertaining as *Ocean’s Eleven.*

Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Garner

'13 Going on 30' (2004) / 'The Adam Project' (2022).

Columbia Pictures; Doane Gregory/Netflix

The two onscreen couplings of Jennifer Garner and Mark Ruffalo both involve traversing space and time in unusual ways. In *13 Going on 30 *(2004), Garner plays a 13-year-old who wakes up as her 30-year-old self and reconnects with the boy-turned-man (Ruffalo) she spurned in the intervening years.

*The Adam Project* (2022), which arrived 18 years later, features the two as a happily married couple — well, in the past tense, as Ruffalo’s character has already passed away. He does, however, appear onscreen through the magic (or science) of time travel, which his character invented.

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He and Garner share fewer scenes this time around, but for those who remember their sorta-teenage connection in that first collaboration, it’s easy to believe these two as destined for each other.

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