Firstly create one graph out of this to connect all the nodes and then run the shortest_path code(There could be an efficient graph library to do this instead of the function mentioned below, nevertheless this one is elegant) and then find out all the number of movie names from the shortest path.
for i in movie_info: actor_info[i] = movie_info[i]def find_shortest_path(graph, start, end, path=[]): path = path + [start] if start == end: return path if not start in graph: return None shortest = None for node in graph[start]: if node not in path: newpath = find_shortest_path(graph, node, end, path) if newpath: if not shortest or len(newpath) < len(shortest): shortest = newpath return shortestL = find_shortest_path(actor_info, 'act1', 'act2')print len([i for i in L if i in movie_info])find_shortest_path Source: http://www.python.org/doc/essays/graphs/