9 on-screen couples who are best friends in real life: from Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet’s Titanic bond, and Emma Watson and Rupert Grint’s Harry Potter days, to Jennifer Aniston and Paul Rudd’s romcoms
- They may have on-screen chemistry, but get along great as friends off-screen – just look at Julia Roberts and George Clooney in Ocean’s Twelve and Ticket to Paradise
- Pals Abbi Jacobson and D’Arcy Carden play secret lovers in A League of Their Own, while Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt bonded over 500 Days of Summer
Some celebrity friendships lend themselves to strong chemistry as couples. So much so that their bonds become unbreakable and they end up not as romantic partners, but besties in real life.
Here are nine of our favourite on-screen couples who are best friends when the camera stop rolling.
1. Abbi Jacobson and D’Arcy Carden
Jacobson and Carden met 15 years ago at an Upright Citizens Brigade improv class and became close friends. In the Amazon Prime Video TV adaptation of the 1992 movie A League of Their Own, the two play clandestine lovers on the Rockford Peaches baseball team.
“It was just two friends that were working with an intimacy coordinator and French-kissing a bunch,” Carden told Glamour magazine of filming romantic scenes together. “I just remember on set in Pittsburgh being like, wow, we’ve kissed every day this week. Like, that’s what we do now.”
2. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet
Winslet and DiCaprio formed a close bond while filming the 1997 blockbuster hit Titanic. Years later, they played a married couple in the 2008 drama Revolutionary Road, for which Winslet won a Golden Globe for best actress in a motion picture drama.
“He’s my friend, my really close friend,” Winslet told The Guardian in 2021. “We’re bonded for life.”