A long-running relationship between an actor and a director can indicate an artistic understanding, a functional routine or even a marketing strategy. Here, a selection of notable directors are shown with actors they cast in at least four films.

Nicole Holofcener From 1996’s “Walking and Talking” to “Enough Said,” Catherine Keener has been a disarmingly direct presence in Nicole Holofcener’s cocktails of satire and neurosis. As Ms. Holofcener’s films joined an indie wave of portraits that held up an unsettling mirror, Ms. Keener provided the potent voice of a woman who would speak her mind, landing her lines with a withering yet nimble deadpan. Their work has been an uncommon match of a female filmmaker and her acting surrogate, a rare relationship in a field that is not known for gender equality. Catherine

Keener

Wes Anderson It’s sometimes said that great filmmakers create worlds, and Mr. Anderson certainly fits the bill. His rogues’ gallery of regular actors ranks with those of the equally troupe-minded classic Hollywood writer-director Preston Sturges. Some of his favorites have come from close to home — the ineffable Wilson brothers, who are fellow Texans — lending a casualness that dovetails with the intimate oddity of his on-screen families. But Mr. Anderson was also instrumental in the transformation of a particular actor: Bill Murray, who shifted from being known as a talented mainstream comic actor into something rather more melancholy and, in new ways, funny. Luke

Wilson Owen

Wilson Bill

Murray

Wong Kar-wai For the Hong Kong-based director of “In the Mood for Love,” repeat collaborations with actors hold a special charge, reflecting the thematic emphasis on memory and longing in his work. In Mr. Wong’s latest film, “The Grandmaster,” Tony Leung returns as a gallant agent suffering romantic torment. This is his seventh outing with Mr. Wong, whose exacting visual craftsmanship is well suited to Mr. Leung’s expressive restraint and matinee idol looks, perhaps on most eloquent display in “In the Mood for Love” alongside the fellow Wong veteran Maggie Cheung. Tony

Leung Maggie

Cheung

Spike Lee Mr. Lee first took note of Denzel Washington in a Broadway production of “A Soldier’s Play,” and their association has spanned “Mo Better Blues” (the Oscar-winning actor’s first starring role), “Malcolm X,” “He Got Game” and “Inside Man.” If an unpredictable aspect of Mr. Lee’s work is what Stanley Crouch called “the hostile entertainer”— a prickly intelligence determined not to let the audience off the hook— then Mr. Washington has provided a rock-solid devotion to character never overshadowed by his star charisma. Denzel

Washington

Martin Scorsese Probably the most famed actor-director team in contemporary cinema has been that of Mr. Scorsese and Robert De Niro. Creating one landmark of American cinema after another, actor and filmmaker each became a legend in his own right. What’s perhaps most remarkable is how often the talents of the two dynamic craftsmen have converged on portraits of deviance (“Taxi Driver,” “King of Comedy”) and criminality (“Mean Streets,” “Goodfellas”). In Mr. Scorsese’s current period, Leonardo DiCaprio has emerged as his actor of choice, but their mutually convenient partnership hasn’t (and perhaps can’t) leave as deep a mark as the De Niro films have. Robert

De Niro Leonardo

DiCaprio

Francis Ford Coppola “The Godfather” minted its own mythology with its epic portrait of a crime family, embodied by its indelible lineup of actors: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, John Cazale and Diane Keaton, to name a few, but ever lurking in the background was Robert Duvall as the vital consigliere. The actor entered Coppola’s orbit with 1969’s “Rain People,” cast at the last minute, but soon enough turned in swiftly sketched character work as the Corleones’ family fixer. Always a filmmaker who swung for the stands, Mr. Coppola would return to Mr. Duvall and his no-nonsense style for the equally unforgettable napalm enthusiast Lt. Col. Kilgore in “Apocalypse Now. Al

Pacino Diane

Keaton Robert

Duvall

Robert Altman Altman populated idiosyncratic panoramas — a gold-rush town in “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” the bittersweet country scene of “Nashville” — with a stock company. For every Warren Beatty, there was a Rene Auberjonois or a Henry Gibson, a figure in the swirling background as Altman’s camera roved. “Altman’s most distinctive quality as a director,” wrote Pauline Kael, “is his gift for creating an atmosphere of living interrelationships and doing it so obliquely that the viewer can’t quite believe it — it seems almost a form of effrontery.” Rene

Auberjonois Henry

Gibson

John Cassavetes In wrenching human dramas ranging from “Faces” to “Husbands” to “A Woman Under the Influence” and “Opening Night,” Cassavetes worked with his regulars — often guy’s guys played by Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk or Seymour Cassel, and, with gumption to match them all, his wife, Gena Rowlands. You might call Cassavetes a behavioral theorist, his camera consumed with a hunger for observation of every nuance of his actors’ performances, as Gazzara and company played out stories that were like experiments in life, in the homes and streets of an unglamorized America. Seymour

Cassel Gena

Rowlands

Alfred Hitchcock As canny a promoter as he was an architect of suspense and imagery, Hitchcock was fully cognizant of the value of stars to his Hollywood films. Yet the draw of a beautiful face or well-known persona also had a crucial formal function: wrapping the audience in the psychological intrigue of his films. Watching Cary Grant in “North by Northwest,” we almost feel as if we’re in on a grand cosmic joke as he is put through multiple baffling adventures. Another recurring face, Jimmy Stewart, had a way of making Hitchcock’s intrigues hit close to home, as the actor found amid extraordinary circumstances (as in “Vertigo” or “The Man Who Knew Too Much”) a relatable, shifting emotional core. Cary

Grant Jimmy

Stewart

John Ford In a career spanning more than 200 films and stretching from the silents to the ’60s, this Hollywood great cultivated a stock company of actors including Harry Carey, Victor McLaglen, Ben Johnson and Ward Bond. He’s popularly known for his work with John Wayne; he helped build the actor’s status as an American legend and masculine icon in films like “The Searchers.” But before Wayne came numerous silent movies with the early Western star Harry Carey Sr. Known for being a taskmaster when breaking an actor in, Ford nonetheless was praised by his actors for his sure hand in bringing out their native strengths. He was also known for his grand pictorial sense, as well as for never sacrificing either the human scale of his characters or the grandeur of his settings. Harry

Carey Ben

Johnson John

Wayne