Ranking 10 Most Prolific Actor-Director Duos Of All Time

Collaborations: Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Man Who Wasn't There, Burn After Reading, Hail Ceasar!

Yeah, yeah. This is technically a trio. But this team is simply too magnificent to leave out of contention because of some B.S. technicality.

Not every actor can thrive within the confines of a Coen Brothers film. But when they do, the directors hold on tight and never let them go. Steve Buscemi, John Goodman, John Turturro, and George Clooney are all frequent residents of the Coen-verse, but none of them have had the kind of lasting impact on their style that Frances McDormand has.

She's become a sort of signpost in the Coens' movies, to the point where it's a bit unsettling to watch one of their films and not see her in there somewhere. Dating back to their directorial debut, Blood Simple -- and including a couple of uncredited appearances in Barton Fink and Miller's Crossing -- the brothers have featured McDormand in literally half the movies they've directed. And she's quite frankly the glue that holds those works together.

Her role in Fargo, as the pregnant, "Minnesota nice" police chief Marge Gunderson not only put McDormand on the map, it also boosted the Coens' reputation to arguably the highest it's ever been.