5. David Lynch And Laura Dern
Films Together: Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and Inland Empire. Despite only working together three times, David Lynch and Laura Dern left a substantial impression on cinema. Their first collaboration was Blue Velvet, Lynch's incendiary masterpiece, most infamous for Dennis Hopper's portrayal of Frank Booth, which meant Dern's performance got overlooked by critics and fans, despite her quiet performance holding the movie together upon the wildness of Hopper and Isabella Rossellini. But Dern never got the credit she deserved, even after Lynch famously campaigned with a cow for her to get an Oscar nomination for Inland Empire. Dern was always at her best for Lynch, as she boldy trusted in his at times unfathomable vision without question, and the result was always a great performance and a great movie. David Lynch's movies are infamous for their surrealism and lack of accessibility, and his work with Dern is probably his most obtuse, as Inland Empire is the most Lynchian of Lynch movies and Wild at Heart is a hysterical piece of surrealism that turned many people off. These days, Lynch appears to be semi-retired from making movies, as he hasn't directed anything since 2006's Inland Empire, though he never made films at the greatest frequency. Meanwhile, Dern can be mostly seen on TV in HBO's Enlightened, though she had a small role in Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master last year.