Movies with overlapping casts

Cafe Society
1

I was watching the new Bridget Jones movie yesterday, starring Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Colin Firth, and Chiwetel Ejiofor…and realized: "Hey! All those guys were in Love, Actually"

I thought there might also be a connection with Sense and Sensibility, and I was close: Thompson, Grant and Alan Rickman – all in Love, Actually.

(This seems particularly coincidental because these 3 films do not have a common director.)

I thought this would be a fun game: name 2 movies that have 3 actors in common, playing different parts - so sequels don’t count. (Marx Bros don’t count, either)

I figure it had to have happened with Ben Stiller - Owen Wilson - Vince Vaughn - Will Farrell.

Or directors that like to use the same “troupe”, like John Ford, Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino.

2

Steve McQueen, James Coburn and Charles Bronson were all in The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape, but both were directed by John Sturges so not a huge surprise, especially considering they are ensemble films.

3

A pair of Japanese movies I like (both directed by Katsuhito Ishii) with English names The Taste of Tea and Funky Forest share at least five actors:

Takahiro Satô
Maya Banno
Ryo Kase
Rinko Kikuchi
Hideaki Anno

4

The Rat Pack and the Brat Pack have entered the discussion, as have every movie that Frank Darabont has ever made.

5

Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, and Danny DeVito started in Romancing the Stone, the sequel Jewel of the Nile, and the unrelated War of the Roses (also directed by DeVito with some clear Hitchcock homage). Apparently they enjoyed working together on the first two movies so much (despite the fiasco that was Jewel) that they happily collaborated on War of the Roses, and it shows.

“Because. When I watch you eat. When I see you asleep. When I look at you lately, I just want to smash your face in.”

Stranger

6

Clint Eastwood, Geoffrey Lewis, and John Quade in “High Plains Drifter” and “Every Which Way But Loose”.

7

A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures have John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline and Michael Palin.

8

There’s overlap between the casts of the Peter Bogdanovich comedy What’s up Doc (staring Ryan O’Neal and Barbra Streisand) and Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein:

Madeline Khan
Liam Dunn
Kenneth Mars

Several years ago I did a chart showing the common actors and tropes among four “Planet Full of Women” comedy SF films from the 1950s:

Abbott and Costello Go to Mars
Cat-Women of the Moon
Missile to the Moon
Queen of Outer Space

9

Eastwood, Sondra Locke and Bill McKinney were in Josie Wales and the Gauntlet (if you will).

He uses a lot of the same actors, so it’s easy to find movies with two, but three is, as the OP notes, tougher.

10

There’s also overlap between two suspense movies with scripts by Peter Stone, Charade (1963) and Mirage (1965). The former is a comedy, so it’s in color and stars Cary Grant; the latter is much darker, so it was filmed in black and white and stars Gregory Peck. Different directors, too

Walter Matthau
George Kennedy

11

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES had Christopher Nolan dip right back into his INCEPTION cast for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, and, of course, Michael Caine (plus a small role in each for Cillian Murphy).

12

They have different directors but Richard Curtis wrote the 1st and 2nd Bridget Jones movies, and directed Love, Actually in between.

13

Jim Broadbent, Tom Felton, and Mark Williams all appeared together in The Borrowers and two of the Harry Potter films.

14

Casablanca (1942) and The Conspirators (1944) – Paul Henreid, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Steven Geray

Casablanca, Background to Danger (1943) and The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) – Greenstreet, Lorre, Geray

Casablanca and Passage to Marseilles (1944) – Bogart, Claude Rains, Greenstreet, Lorre, Helmut Dantine

Casablanca and Hotel Berlin (1945) – Lorre, Dantine, Geray

Casablanca and Rope of Sand (1949) – Henreid, Lorre, Rains

15

Christopher Guest had his troupe in Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind.

16

Hammer Films used both Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing pretty extensively. So did Universal with Karloff and Lugosi, and depending on the movie, Lon Chaney, Jr.

17

A comprehensive list! Except the most obvious one: Casablanca and Maltese Falcon (Bogart, Lorre and Greenstreet).

As your list demonstrates, in the days when studios were all-powerful (in this case, Warner Bros) overlapping casts would be more common.

18

The Coen Brothers brought back John Goodman, John Turturro, and Steve Buscemi for The Big Lebowski after casting all three in Barton Fink.

19

See also: Universal pairing Rock Hudson with Doris Day in three ‘and Tony Randall’ movies.

20

Karen Dotrice and Matthew Garber (the Banks children) and Ed Wynn (Uncle Albert) from Mary Poppins also appeared in the lesser-known live-action Disney film The Gnome-Mobile.