Tom Hanks has worked more than once with the following directors:
Steven Spielberg (Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me If You Can, and The Terminal)
Ron Howard (Splash, Apollo 13 and the upcoming The DaVinci Code)
Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump ,Cast Away, and The Polar Express)
Penny Marshall (Big and A League of Their Own)
Has any other actor worked so often with so many directors?
Bette Davis:
William Wyler (Jezebel, The Letter, The Little Foxes)
Michael Curtiz (20,000 Years in Sing Sing, The Cabin in the Cotton, Front Page Woman, Jimmy the Gent, Kid Galahad, Marked Woman, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex)
Anatole Litvak (The Sisters, All This and Heaven Too)
Edmund Goulding (The Great Lie, The Old Maid, Dark Victory, That Certain Woman)
Alfred E Green (Dangerous, The Dark Horse, The Girl from 10th Avenue, The Golden Arrow, Housewife, Parachute Jumper, The Rich Are Always with Us)
Robert Aldrich (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte)
There are others but I think that’s enough to blow your little example clean out of the water.
This was much more common in the studio days, when actors and directors were contractors, required for the most part to take any job the studio assigned them.
Many; three movies together is not even enough to be notable.
Cary Grant, for instance, worked with Alfred Hitchcock three times (Notorious, To Catch a Thief, and North by Northwest) and Howard Hawks five times (Bringing Up Baby, Only Angels Have Wings, His Girl Friday, I Was a Male War Bride, and Monkey Business0.
John Wayne worked with John Ford at least ten times (the IMDB is giving some false positives and runs the count to 22), including Stagecoach, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Fort Apache, The Searchers, The Quiet Man, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Donovan’s Reef and several others. Wayne worked with Hawks an additional five times.
Humphrey Bogart made six films with John Huston (The Maltese Falcon, Across the Pacific, Key Largo, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, The African Queen, and Beat the Devil).
I think any actor who has any longevity could work with a number of directors several times…For instance, James Stewart worked with Anthony Mann (Winchester '73,Naked Spur,The Far Country,The Man From Laramie).
John Ford (How the West Was Won,Two Rode Together,Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,Cheyenne Autumn)
Hitchcock(Rope,Rear Window,The Man Who Knew Too Much,Vertigo)
Capra(You Can’t Take It With You,Mr Smith Goes Too Washington,It’s a Wonderful Life)
Clarence Brown (Wife vs Secretary,Of Human heart,Gorgeous Hussy)
Samuel L. Jackson:
Spike Lee (Do The Right Thing, School Daze, Jungle Fever)
Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill)
George Lucas (Star Wars prequels)
Kasi Lemmons (Eve’s Bayou, The Caveman’s Valentine)
Renny Harlin (The Long Kiss Goodnight, Deep Blue Sea)
I think in these days in Hollywood, a director/actor working together three times or more is pretty notable.
I misread the original post, so to continue:
Cary Grant (in addition to Hitchcock and Hawks): George Cukor (Holiday, The Philadephia Story, Sylvia Scarlett), Leo McCarey (The Awful Truth, An Affair to Remember, Once Upon a Honeymoon), Stanley Donen (Charade, The Grass is Greener, Indescrete, Kiss them for Me), and George Stevens (Gunga Din, Penny Serenade, The Talk of the Town).
Add to John Wayne: Andrew McLaglen (Cahill U.S. Marshal, Chisum, Hellfighters, McLintock!, The Undefeated), Robert N. Bradbury (15 films together in Wayne’s early days), Henry Hathaway (seven or eight films), Michael Curtiz (three if you count Wayne’s appearance as an extra in Noah’s Ark), and William Wellman.
As others have noted, this was once EXTREMELY common, when the old Hollywood studio system was at its peak.
But even now, there are numerous directors who like using the same ensemble of actors on a regular basis.
I mean, Diane Keaton has appeared in loads of Woody Allen’s movies, as have Mia Farrow, Tony Roberts and Julie Kavner.
Martin Scorsese has worked with Robert De Niro in “Cape Fear,” “Goodfellas,” “Raging Bull” “Mean Streets,” “King of Comedy,” “Casino,” “Taxi Driver,” and “New York, New York.”
How about Jim Jarmusch? He has done a number of movies with Tom Waits, John Lurie, Roberto Benigni, Rockets Redglare, etc.
I had a feeling that the answer would be a classic movie star, due to the old Hollywood studio system. But that raises another question. Under that system, how much say did directors have with regards to casting? Did the studios ever force directors and actors to work together more than once because their first movie was successful even though they didn’t get along?
Some actors worked with directors simply because of the system. John Wayne with Robert N. Bradbury, for example.
But the better directors did tend to choose their own lead actors and liked working with particular stars. In addition, a big name actor would be in demand, and the big name directors would have the push to get them.
I’m sure the studios might have matched directors and actors from time to time who didn’t get along. But I doubt it was common – the result would be bad work, and there were plenty of other directors and actors who could be matched without friction.
Ingmar Bergman used the same actors and actresses constantly: Liv Ullman was in loads of them (“Persona,” “Cries and Whispers,” “Autumn Sonata,” et al), as were Max Von Sydow and Bibi Andersson.