Please, make it stop: the five worst actor-director partnerships of all time
Every actor and director partnership dreams of becoming the next John Wayne and John Ford, Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese, Samuel L Jackson and Quentin Tarantino, or Bill Murray and Wes Anderson, but it doesn’t always work that way.
It’s fair enough for a filmmaker to collaborate with an on-camera performer and decide they want to make them a recurring fixture of their filmography from that point on, even if a line should be drawn when the audience is greeted with nothing but dreck in the years to come.
Some creative combinations bring out the best in each other, and plenty have brought out the worst, with Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski being the most famous examples of the latter. And yet, for all of their animosity, death threats, and physical violence towards each other, the maverick duo could be relied on to deliver something worth watching.
The same can’t be said for the following five duos, who’ve all made at least five films together, and they’ve all been wretched. Their bonds may have endured through so much on-screen abhorrence, but it would be a blessing for everyone if they stopped subjecting the world to their shared work.
Cinema’s five worst actor-director partnerships:
Milla Jovovich and Paul WS Anderson
Paul WS Anderson and Milla Jovovich first met on the video game adaptation Resident Evil, after which they fell in love and eventually got married. It’s a nice story and a familiar one in Hollywood, which doesn’t excuse them from making so many terrible movies together.
The filmmaker and his wife have since collaborated on Resident Evil sequels Afterlife, Retribution, and The Final Chapter, as well as the cack-handed literary adaptation The Three Musketeers and the console-to-screen translation Monster Hunter. Needless to say, they’ve hardly been setting the cinematic world on fire.
The pair specialise in mind-numbing genre flicks with little style and less substance, and after six films together, they’ve still yet to craft anything above passable, and even that’s being generous. Will the seventh time mark the charm when Jovovich plays the lead in 2025’s In the Lost Lands? Based on history, probably not.
Will Sanderson and Uwe Boll
Loyalty is an underrated and often under-utilised virtue in Hollywood, but was it really the wisest idea for Will Sanderson to hitch his performative wagon to a director who may well be the single worst to ever wield the megaphone?
Sanderson was present and accounted for in the controversial and confrontational German filmmaker’s In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, Seed, BloodRayne, Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead, Heart of America, and Blackwoods, all of which were suitably horrendous affronts to the name of cinema.
Those films conspired to earn multiple nominations at the Razzies, all in the ‘Worst Picture’ or ‘Worst Director’ categories, underlining that just because an actor is willing to repeatedly reunite with a certain filmmaker, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea.
Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone
Two-time Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee, two-time Primetime Emmy winner, and comedic powerhouse Melissa McCarthy has proven her chops in comedy and drama, even if it’s probably not a coincidence several of her weakest movies have come with husband Ben Falcone at the helm.
Another couple who clearly enjoy spending time in each other’s company, Falcone made his feature debut with 2014’s Tammy, which had McCarthy in the lead. Since then, he’s gone on to direct The Boss, Life of the Party, Superintelligence, and Thunder Force, all of which happen to also have McCarthy in the lead.
All of them were resoundingly panned by critics, landing McCarthy a Razzie nomination for ‘Worst Supporting Actress’ and a win for ‘Worst Actress’ into the bargain. The fact Falcone hasn’t helmed anything without his other and more successful half in tow possibly indicates that he knows he’d be doomed without her, which is alarming when they’ve gone zero-for-five as a partnership.
Adam Sandler and Dennis Dugan
When Adam Sandler works with someone he likes, he makes a point of welcoming them into his inner circle, a cabal of recurring collaborators on either side of the camera that’s steadily grown bigger throughout his decades in the spotlight.
He’s made some atrocious pictures with the likes of Allan Covert, Rob Schneider, Kevin James, Steven Brill, Tim Herlihy, and others, but there’s a special place in filmic hell reserved for his eight-time director Dennis Dugan, who’s somehow both the most frequent director in the Happy Madison stable while also being the worst.
He’s overseen Sandler’s Happy Gilmore, Big Daddy, I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, Grown Ups, Just Go With It, Jack and Jill, and Grown Ups 2, an octet that’s combined to net a grand total of 38 Razzie nominations and 13 wins, encapsulating how a famous person keeping their friend gainfully employed can go perpetually awry.
Tyler Perry and Tyler Perry
Tyler Perry is clearly doing something right when he’s a multimedia mogul and a certified billionaire, but he’s also a purveyor of largely terrible films that fall entirely on his shoulders when, more often than not, he’s the one writing, directing, producing, and starring in them.
He’s helmed 26 features and counting, in which he’s appeared onscreen 17 times. Admittedly, he’s reprised the role of Madea in 11 of them, but that shouldn’t be used as an excuse. Perry has made a huge number of bad movies, and casting himself in most of them is just one of their many glaring issues.
For those pictures where he’s directed himself as a cast member, a cumulative haul of two Razzies might seem fairly innocuous. However, he’s been nominated 23 times in total, making Perry the filmmaker, the worst enemy of Perry, the actor, because the end result is almost always the same.
