Ever since making its Netflix premiere on November 25, 2020, The Christmas Chronicles 2 has remained among the streamer's Top 10 trendiest movie titles. The sequel to the surprise 2018 breakout hit is directed by Chris Columbus, a filmmaker who knows a thing or two about successful family Christmas films having written Gremlins and directed Home Alone.
One of the major draws of The Christmas Chronicles 2 is the pairing of real-life couple Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn as Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus. Although it's not the first time Russell and Hawn have starred in a film together, they continue to a longheld tradition of real-life couples playing opposite one another on the big screen.
By The Sea (2015)
While generally panned by critics as overly self-indulgent, By the Sea pairs two of the biggest movie stars in the history of cinema as an embattled married couple working out their problems at a ravishing French hotel.
Angelina Jolie wrote, directed, and starred opposite her real-life spouse Brad Pitt in a film whose subject matter seemed to mirror the couples' offscreen issues in a sort of art imitates life dynamic. The couple separated less than a year after the release of the film.
Love Affair (1994)
Roughly two years after tying the knot in 1992, infamous ladies' man Warren Beatty starred opposite his new wife Annette Bening in the aptly titled Love Affair, a remake of the 1939 film of the same name.
Beatty and Bening play Mike and Terry, two strangers who meet on a flight to Australia. Upon a forced landing, Mike and Terry get to know each other while aboard a boat transporting them to their Sydney destination. While both are engaged to others, they decide to meet in New York months later to continue their affair, but only one of them shows up.
Flesh And Bone (1993)
Although they appeared together in Joe Dante's Innerspace in 1987, Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan did not star in a film together as a real-life married couple until Flesh and Bone in 1993.
The third feature film written by Harry Potter scribe Steve Kloves follows Arliss (Quaid), a man who saw his father murder a family when he was a child. Thirty years later, Arliss runs into the surviving member of the slaughtered family, Kay (Ryan), who was a baby at the time. Blissfully unaware of each other's past, terror strikes when Arliss' father Roy (James Caan) suddenly comes home.
Ali (2001)
While their marriage has publicly hit the rocks in recent years, nothing will ever change the fact that Will Smith and his significant other, Jada Pinkett, starred together in the sublime biopic of Heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali.
Directed by Michael Mann, Ali focuses on the most important time in Cassius Clay's career from the mid-60s to mid-70s, as the global icon goes from Heavyweight champ to criticized Civil Rights activists. Pinkett plays Sonji Roi, Ali's temporary wife during the tumultuous period.
Dodgeball (2004)
Although Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor filmed Zoolander together four months after getting hitched, they showed off their marital chemistry even further three years later in Dodgeball.
The film traces a motley crew of rejects and misfits who a new dodgeball team led by Peter La Fleur (Vince Vaughn). Their biggest competition upon ing a dodgeball tournament is The Vipers, a team led by White Goodman (Stiller). Taylor plays Kate Veach, White's lawyer who is physically disgusted by his mere presence.
Overboard (1987)
Despite dating since Valentine's Day in 1983, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn have never officially been married. And while they starred together in Jonathan Demme's Swing Shift in 1984, the two upped their onscreen chemistry in the classic 1987 rom-com Overboard.
The movie stars Hawn as Joanna, a cruel and uptight woman who hires a carpenter to redesign her shoe closet on her elegant yacht. She hires and continues to insult the blue-collar Dean (Russell) before losing her memory when going overboard the ship. In a ploy to teach her a lesson in humility, Dean pretends the amnesiac is his wife and brings her home to care for his four boys.
Loving Pablo (2017)
Oscar-winning Spanish actors Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz have worked together before and after being married in 2010. Their first pre-marital collaboration was Pedro Almodovar's 1992 film Jamon Jamon and their most recent post-marital t-film includes the Spanish film, Loving Pablo.
All told, Cruz and Bardem have made nine films together thus far. As for Loving Pablo, the film traces the unlikely romance between infamous drug-lord Pablo Escobar (Bardem) and Colombian TV newswoman Virginia Vallejo (Cruz) in 1981.
A Quiet Place (2018)
One of the most successful critical and commercial hit movies to feature a real-life married couple includes A Quiet Place, directed by and starring John Krasinski opposite his bride Emily Blunt.
The suberbly crafted creature-feature takes place in a future world where giant monsters who hunt by sound have wiped out much of Earth's human population. Lee Abbott (Krasinski) does all he can to protect his wife and three children and guide them to a safe haven. After an unspeakable tragedy, the Abbotts contend with grief as well as the monstrous mutants ravaging the area.
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Stanley Kubrick's masterful swan song Eyes Wide Shut stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, two of the biggest movie stars in the history of Hollywood. Although many have claimed the exhaustive shoot and difficult subject matter led to their divorce, the couple remained together for more than two years after the film's release.
On the surface, Eyes Wide Shut is about the sexual frustration a married couple expresses and their desire for potential infidelity. Below the surface, the film is littered with subliminal imagery and hidden meaning.
Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
Mike Nichols' 5-time Oscar-winning debut feature Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is arguably the greatest film to ever star a real-life married couple. The film stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, a couple who actually married each other twice in their lifetime.
Adapted from the Edward Albee play, the film follows an unhappy older couple, Martha (Taylor)and George (Burton), who drunkenly bicker with one another while entertaining an attractive younger couple (Sandy Denis and George Segal) for the evening. As the two expose their most vile thoughts and transgressions, a dramatic volcano erupts in the end. Taylor won her second Oscar for her performance.
