Ranking 10 Most Prolific Actor-Director Duos Of All Time

Collaborations: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, New York New York, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, Goodfellas, Cape Fear, Casino

Can you imagine where Robert De Niro's career would have gone without the careful guidance of Martin Scorsese? Good news: you don't have to! Just compare the movies De Niro made without him (Backdraft, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, The Fan) to those with Scorsese at the helm. It's likely De Niro wouldn't have had a legacy to heinously tarnish in his later years without the New York-born director casting him as Travis Bickle in the first place.

But that's what truly great directors do. They find something in their actors that no one else can. In De Niro, Scorsese found an honesty that was both brilliant and brutal. No character he's played outside of these collaborations has measured up in pure heart and intensity, and that's no coincidence.

Scorsese took a brief hiatus from mainstream movies in the mid-90s, which is not-so-coincidentally the same time De Niro began his decade-plus streak of phoning it in.

When the director resurfaced in a big way with 2002's Gangs of New York, he had found a new toy to play with. And although Scorsese's had plenty of success with Leonardo DiCaprio, there was a magic to his previous relationship that simply can't be matched.