Kurt & Goldie's greatest hits: The 21 greatest movies starring Hollywood's favorite power couple

Perhaps no other director is associated with Kurt Russell more so than John Carpenter, the master of horror himself. The two worked on five projects together (three of which are on this list), but the best of them all is "Escape From New York." In it, he plays Snake Plissken, a former military special forces badass sent into Manhattan, now the largest prison in this dystopian version of America, to rescue the president in exchange for his freedom. 

Kurt Russell is best known for being an action star, but did you know that he was a former Disney star for much of the 1970s? That probably explains why that Russell played Copper the hound in the Disney animated movie the same year he was Snake Plissken in "Escape from New York."

John Carpenter's "The Thing," a remake of the 1951 movie "The Thing from Another World," bombed when it first came out. Since then, the paranoiac flick about a murderous alien morphing creature stalking an Antarctic American base camp has become a sci-fi classic. Kurt Russell plays R.J. MacReady, a helicopter pilot just trying to survive.

Yet another John Carpenter movie vindicated by time (like "The Thing," it also bombed but became a cult classic thanks to the advent of home video), Kurt Russell plays Jack Burton, a long-haul truck driver who just wants to collect his gambling winnings, but instead becomes involved in trying to stop a centuries old Chinese evil wizard.

A buddy cop movie with Kurt Russell and  Sylvester Stallone — what more could you want? In this gem of a film, Russell plays Gabriel Cash, an LAPD narcotics detective from downtown who's forced to team up with his longtime rival Raymond Tango (Stallone) to clear their names after the two are framed by a drug lord. 

Kurt Russell leads this ensemble cast about a group of firefighters in Chicago trying to uncover the identity of a serial arsonist all the while facing staff cuts by a local politician. Russell plays Lt. Stephen "Bull" McCaffrey, a no-nonsense second-generation firefighter who has to look after his little brother. 

There were two big Western movies about legendary lawman Wyatt Earp in the early 1990s: "Tombstone" (1993) and "Wyatt Earp" (1994). Kurt Russell played the historical figure in the former (Kevin Costner was in the latter), which also happened to be the more successful of the two.

Kurt Russell teamed up with Disney once again in 2004 to play Herb Brooks, the University of Minnesota ice hockey coach tapped by the United States Olympic Committee to lead the U.S. hockey team at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. Brooks' ragtag squad of college players went on to defeat the powerhouse Soviet Union team in the medal round at the height of the Cold War. The victory was so unlikely, it became known as the "Miracle on Ice." It's considered to be one of the biggest upsets in the history of sports.

The new millennium has been good to Kurt Russell. Since 2000, the veteran actor has starred in a series of big-budget movies like the "Fast & Furious" franchise and "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2." But if we had to pick our favorite performance of that period, we'd go with his turn as "Stuntman" Mike McKay in Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof."

Like other entrants on this list, "Captain Ron" was unfairly judged in its time. Russell plays the titular Captain Ron, a one-eyed sailor who offers to take an uptight suburban dad (Martin Short) and his family through the Caribbean. Think of "Captain Ron" as the Florida Man's version of the Bill Murray classic, "What About Bob?"

You can't do a list of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn movies and not include one that they were both in. The rom-com "Overboard" (1987) is the better known of them, but we're going to go with "Swing Shift" (1983), a World War II-era drama about a woman (Hawn) who falls in love with a musician (Russell) while her husband is fighting abroad. It is, after all, the movie where they first became involved with each other.

Goldie Hawn won her only Oscar (it was for Best Actress) for her performance in this romantic comedy that lends a lot of credence to the notion that men are trash. In "Cactus Flower," Hawn portrays Toni Simmons, a young woman who tries to commit suicide after her boyfriend (Walter Matthau) refuses to marry her. The reasoning? He has a wife and kids. Except he doesn't; he made that all up to avoid commitment.

Peter Sellers is one of the funniest comedians that ever lived, and yet it's Goldie Hawn who steals the show in this British sex comedy about a womanizer (Sellers) who falls in love with an American hippie (Hawn). Her performance in this film — one of Peter Seller's last real big hits — earned Hawn a BAFTA nomination. 

In this crime drama (it was not only Steven Spielberg's full-length feature directorial debut, but also the first time he worked with composer John Williams), Hawn plays Lou Jean Poplin, a woman on the verge of losing her son to Child Protective Services who convinces her husband to break out of prison so they can get their son and run away together as a family. The film is a loose adaptation of real events.

In this comedy set in the day of the 1968 presidential election, Goldie Hawn plays Jill Haynes, a young hair dresser at a Beverly Hills salon romantically involved with George Roundy (played by Warren Beatty), a conniving and insecure co-worker dead set on opening up his own shop.

In what would become a recurring theme in her filmography, "Foul Play" is basically a movie where Goldie Hawn plays a character that has to deal with the consequences of the men in her life. In "Foul Play," she portrays Gloria Mundy,  a reserved librarian who unbeknownst to her becomes involved in a plot to kill the Pope.

Goldie Hawn has proven time and time again that she has comedic chops. In "Private Benjamin," she plays Judy Benjamin, a sheltered girl from a well-to-do family that joins the army after her newlywed husband dies during the consummation of their marriage. Her performance earned Hawn her second Oscar nomination for best actress.

In this movie named after the Leonard Cohen song, Hawn plays Marianne Graves, a woman abandoned by her former lover (Mel Gibson) because he's forced to enter the FBI's witness protection service after sending a dirty DEA agent to jail. Marianne has a chance encounter with her ex, which results in his cover being blown. The two are then forced to go on the lam. In short, "Bird on a Wire"  is yet another movie in which Goldie Hawn has to deal with her man's mess.

This rom-com — it's more com than rom — is kind of like a modern take on the play "Cyrano de Bergerac." In this comedy, Goldie Hawn plays Gwen, a squatter who agrees to help Newton (Steve Martin) win the affections of another woman in exchange for all the furniture in his big, brand new house.

In this Robert Zemeckis-directed comedy, Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep play bitter rivals in love with the same man who are trying to cling on to their youth and beauty. The two stumble upon a magical potion that promises to grant them both for eternity. The downside? When their bodies die naturally, they won't, making them into zombies, basically.

Goldie Hawn joins Diane Keaton and Bette Midler play a trio of long-lost friends brought together by their shared desire to get revenge on their ex-husbands for leaving them for younger women. This 1996 comedy was a surprise hit at the box office thanks in large part to middle-aged women, who showed up in droves.