15 Best Brad Pitt Movies, Ranked

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Brad Pitt has had an illustrious career as one of Hollywood’s most charming and attractive stars—a ’90s and 2000s heartthrob (twice named People’s Sexiest Man Alive) who’s since become a bona fide Oscar winner. Many of the Hollywood A-lister’s projects reveal an actor drawn to bold, original material, far beyond blockbuster fluff. He’s worked repeatedly with auteurs like David Fincher, Quentin Tarantino, and Steven Soderbergh, and also collaborated with the Coen Brothers, James Gray, Terrence Malick, Steve McQueen, and more.

Pitt’s commitment to distinctive work also shows in his prolific producing, with recent credits including RaMell Ross’ “Nickel Boys” and Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17”. His career balances Hollywood glamor with artistic credibility, showing a willingness to experiment as much as a knack for classic movie-star magnetism. If the question is which actors we can still classify as a true Hollywood star, Brad Pitt has an undeniable place in the conversation. 

Here are the 15 best Brad Pitt movies, ranked.

Time has been kind to David Fincher’s “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” Despite three Oscar wins and generally positive reviews, the film initially drew some criticism for its sentimentality and lengthy runtime. But its strange, stirring heart has endured—thanks largely to an ensemble led by Brad Pitt.

Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1922 short story, Pitt plays Benjamin Button, a man born old who ages in reverse. The film’s surreal premise adds a layer of weirdness to its emotional arc, and Pitt’s old-man makeup and digital effects helped earn two of its Oscars. Fincher (who had to wait half a decade to make “Benjamin Button”) excavates an exceedingly vulnerable performance from his star. Pitt’s retroactive experience of life becomes a surreal rumination on death and how we live. The film tilts toward emotional manipulation, but Fincher and Pitt wrench the truthfulness to the forefront, making for a melodrama attuned to the disquiet of mortality.

Pitt plays a distinctly supporting role in “12 Years a Slave,” but his impact was more substantial behind the scenes as a producer through his company, Plan B Entertainment. This 1841-set biographical drama, centered on Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor)—a free Black man kidnapped and sold into slavery—stands as an unflinching portrait of America’s monstrous history, told through the lens of, as Pitt described him during the film’s Best Picture win at the Oscars, “the indomitable Mr. Steve McQueen.”

It’s a fitting tribute to one of our most forthright and insightful filmmakers, whose work often explores the enduring traumas of Black Americans. “12 Years a Slave” is unsparing in its depiction of Northup’s harrowing journey, laying bare the brutal realities of slavery as he’s passed from one plantation to the next, each overseen by a succession of cruel slave owners. Ejiofor’s sincere, poignant performance carries the weight of generational wounds, inviting audiences to witness and comprehend the ruthless reality of living under the watch of evil for a lifetime.

Even Pitt’s character, the sympathetic Bass—who ultimately helps Northup—represents only a fleeting grace. His relative compassion is framed heroically and skirts the edge of white saviorism. But the film’s real-life foundation tempers that risk, presenting a society so consumed by evil that it corrupts even the possibility of sustained empathy.

“12 Monkeys” arrived as Pitt was becoming a hot Hollywood commodity, thanks to standout turns in genre fare like the pulpy postmodernism of “True Romance” (a great movie only omitted here to focus on films where Pitt has a more central presence), the supernatural melodrama of “Interview with the Vampire,” and the seedy police procedural grit of “Se7en.” Now, he stepped into a high-concept Terry Gilliam sci-fi, supporting Bruce Willis’ James Cole—a convict sent from a post-apocalyptic future to stop the virus that will decimate humanity.

Pitt plays Jeffrey Goines, a manic patient at the mental hospital where Cole is committed, who’s involved with the mysterious 12 Monkeys organization that may—or may not—be behind the outbreak. The character’s ambiguity, and whether he holds the key to Cole’s quest or is just a red herring, gives Pitt room to play a big, twitchy personality whose motives remain inscrutable to both Cole and the audience — indeed, Pitt was so committed to his role in “12 Monkeys” that it left him struggling to move. Pitt perfectly channels Gilliam’s manic, heightened reality—one that slowly reveals itself as a mirror of our own.

Writer and director James Gray’s “Ad Astra” is a peculiar film—slow-paced and austere, with an art-house temperament, yet embracing big-budget beats like dune buggy shootouts with space bandits and killer baboons attacking a space station crew. It veers in strange directions that nearly tip it into absurdity, but Gray’s careful direction and Pitt’s pathos-driven performance help ground it into something genuinely affecting.

Gray has always been a soulful filmmaker, and Pitt is his perfect match for “Ad Astra,” bringing a quiet, stirring intensity to Roy McBride, an astronaut sent to investigate mysterious power surges from deep in the solar system — possibly linked to a long-abandoned mission led by his estranged father, H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones). On paper, a sci-fi weepy about father-son trauma and the search for closure could feel like pure schmaltz. In Gray and Pitt’s hands, it’s something far stranger, more intimate, and genuinely powerful.

Pitt’s latest outing gives him a chance to reflect on his status as an aging star — the 61-year-old plays a washed-up Formula racer who once gave up on his F1 dreams, but is pulled back in to mentor a hotshot prodigy who could go all the way, if he can get past his ego. “F1” leans into a familiar, erm, formula, but does so with the sturdiness of a well-built machine.

That’s thanks to “Top Gun: Maverick” director Joseph Kosinski, who brings his experience shooting high-octane, precision-built machines to this film’s racing sequences. The crew embedded themselves in the real F1 season, operating out of their own garage and using innovative camera techniques to follow Pitt and newcomer Damson Idris, both of whom trained to drive real Formula vehicles. The result is a tremendous final product, a worthwhile tradeoff for “F1” sounding like it had one of the most difficult film shoots of all time. “F1” channels a classic movie-star blockbuster vibe and stands as a propulsive, crowd-pleasing summer spectacle.

In another world, there’d be no reason for this unassuming behind-the-scenes sports drama—about the Oakland A’s general manager adopting unconventional analytics to turn around a losing, underfunded team—to have the staying power it does. And yet, thanks to Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin’s sharp adaptation of Michael Lewis’ book, and a stalwart ensemble including Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright, Chris Pratt, and more, the true story of “Moneyball” stands out as one of the great sports movies of the 2010s.

It’s the kind of sturdy, middlebrow actor’s showcase film fans often long to see return to theaters — smart, character-driven, and far removed from the weightless CGI churn of modern franchises. Pitt is excellent, carrying entire scenes with effortless movie-star appeal, while imbuing his character with specific quirks and tics (this is a great movie to watch Brad Pitt constantly eating). That such compelling drama was mined from the shifting analytical philosophy of baseball is a minor miracle in itself.

When faced with the prospect of making a sequel to his sparkling heist-movie hit “Ocean’s Eleven,” Steven Soderbergh did what comes naturally to him when tasked with zigging directly into the formula that spelled previous success: he zagged like crazy. “Ocean’s Twelve” feels like Soderbergh pulling a heist on Hollywood studio money to turn in a shaggy dog, freewheeling sequel that lives and dies by a commitment to new, weird directions.

The sprawling ensemble is back with everyone from George Clooney to Julia Roberts to Matt Damon and, of course, Brad Pitt, but contrary to the intricately designed plot contraptions of the first film, the crew is forced back into action with a hilarious inevitability that reflects a meta commentary on the nature of sequels, now traipsing all around Europe in a mode that feels more like a vacation than a high-stakes mission. Soderbergh has a ball playing with audience expectations with a free-spirited sense of stylistic and story experimentation, including a scene where Tess Ocean (Roberts) has to stall a playing-himself Bruce Willis by pretending to be…Julia Roberts, a scene that continues to make “Ocean’s Twelve” profoundly controversial among film fans. But it also encapsulates the wanton gaiety of a sequel that earns its carefree attitude.

“Ocean’s Eleven” is as slick a piece of perfectly engineered Hollywood entertainment as they come, and it’s precisely that precision that gave Soderbergh the freedom to invert the formula entirely for its sequel. He pulls it off so smoothly here; why would he want to repeat himself? “Ocean’s Eleven” already exists for anyone who wants it: it’s a witty, slinky, rigorously plotted heist movie that delivers on just about every level you could ask for, including serving as an indulgent actor’s showcase for some of our greatest movie stars.

What’s sometimes forgotten is that this Ted Griffin–written film is a remake of the 1960 movie of the same name. But it’s a miraculous overhaul in nearly every respect, transforming a sluggish Rat Pack vehicle into an ultra-cool display of style and cinematic fantasy. Soderbergh’s camera — and the performers captured in its sightlines — are intoxicating, and with their charming winks, they make the world of dangerous heists terrifically seductive.

Maybe the epitome of a ’90s cult classic, “Fight Club” has had an arduous journey to its status as one of the major highlights of director David Fincher’s career, as well as that of his stars Edward Norton and Brad Pitt. Even in certain circles today, it’s derided as a shallow exercise in heavy-handed stylization that lends itself to some kind of reductive “bro,” or even far-right, culture — Fincher has even gone on record as not being a fan of a certain audience that likes “Fight Club.” Of course, such a culture is the very subject that the film takes to task, allowing “Fight Club” to join the ranks of satires that are woefully misunderstood by the targets planted in the audience.

The truth is that “Fight Club” is a scathing portrait of societal rot during the twilight of a century that, in its last gasp, had come to be defined by exhaustive capitalism and an inescapable fatigue of feeling like a cog in an ever-destructive machine. In adapting Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, which observes this collapse through a lens of virulent manhood looking for an escape, Fincher makes a mordant and depressing character portrait that’s nonetheless bleakly hilarious and full of eccentric formal panache. On top of it all, Norton and Pitt are a perfectly catastrophic duo, creating an antsy tension via their lurching relationship, until a twist for the ages brings it all into amazing focus.

Before deriding a masculine obsession with violence as a form of control in “Fight Club,” David Fincher made a crime procedural that looks at violence as an all-compassing force of horror amid cultural decay. “Se7en” is the feel-bad thriller that would go on to perpetually give similarly dark films in his filmography a run for their money. Pitt and Morgan Freeman co-star as ideologically contrasting homicide detectives on the hunt for a serial killer who stages his crimes after the seven deadly sins, taking the viewer on an unrelenting tour of a grim and squalid metropolis where everyday atrocities are a given and the rain is seemingly never-ending.

There’s a dreary inevitability that casts a shadow over the broad structure of your typical pulp plotting, as Fincher and cinematographer Darius Khondji craft a vision of a genre movie defined by urban collapse and an understanding of the reality of evil that sticks in your teeth. Plus, Fincher’s knack for delivering a gut-punch ending was salient early on, and “Se7en” closes on a note still constantly referenced to this day, perhaps so severe that unsuspecting audiences couldn’t possibly forget it, and deftly sold by Pitt’s performance. Such an emphatically dark movie can sometimes come off as forced; in the world of “Se7en,” this is simply the horrifying natural order.

It’s bad form in criticism to immediately jump to talking about how underrated a certain work may be, but whenever the term raises its touchy head, “Burn After Reading” is always one of the first movies to pop into my mind. Following the esteemed cultural and critical acclaim brought on by the solemn philosophical musings of “No Country For Old Men,” the Coen Brothers turned around the following year with a wacky, gag-filled satire about the idiocy of both American governmental bureaucracy, and the ordinary nobodies of the world who desperately want to be somebodies — a pitch that initially left star George Clooney a little worried.

The ensemble cast — including Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, and Richard Jenkins — are all perfectly in on the bit, but none moreso than Pitt, whose performance as the doltish personal trainer Chad perfectly employs the star’s pretty-boy aura to craft one of cinema’s great imbeciles. He makes himself an ideal fit for the world of the Coens, wherein cosmic consequence and insignificance are two sides of the same coin, and here they translate to a magnificently cynical and funny farce.

The epic scope of American myth meets the rigor of art-house formalism in director Andrew Dominik’s excavation of the ghosts of Western legend. Pitt turns in a quietly intense performance as outlaw and bank/train robber Jesse James, studied with a single-minded obsessiveness by Casey Affleck as Robert Ford, whose idolatry is challenged in a biting critique of our collective self-mythologizing and romanticization of figures in our history that, realistically, were killers, or, as per the title, cowards.

Pitt’s star power is used commandingly here, himself a celebrity of overpowering proportions whose presence haunts the extended lengths of the runtime he doesn’t physically appear in. Dominik’s sense of structure and pacing — along with Roger Deakin’s remarkable and pioneering cinematography, which sits as some of the best visual work of any movie this century — morph this into something poetic and enigmatic, full of beguiling interpretations of western archetypes amid a disenchanted understanding of the foundations of our own history. “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” is one of the best movies of the 2000s.

For his ninth feature film (depending on whether you count “Kill Bill” as one movie or two), Quentin Tarantino gave Brad Pitt a character that instantly fits snugly into the actor’s lexicon of quintessential roles — so much so that David Fincher is directing a sequel focused on the character for Netflix. Pitt’s sauntering performance as the aged and jaded stuntman Cliff Booth feels like a part destined for the star, and he’s an invaluable addition to Tarantino’s uncharacteristically sentimental and romantic vision, detailing with fairy-tale-like splendor the waning days of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

It’s not all nostalgic fantasy: Tarantino’s proclivity for cartoonishly brutal violence still makes an eleventh-hour appearance, but it’s in service of changing the trajectory of a sordid history within the industry that marked an inexorable cultural shift. Tarantino’s genius behind “Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood” is in his simple desire to spend a little extra time in the period that produced all the movies he loved and has informed everything he’s ever made — and maybe give that time a second chance.

Pitt’s collaboration with Terrence Malick, one of the great masters of deeply felt, impressionistic storytelling, stands as some of the best work of either’s career. The scope of “The Tree of Life” begins massive, detailing the origins of time, the universe, and Earth, before settling down to contextualize all of its cosmic contemplation within the confines of a middle-class family living in Waco, TX, smack dab in the middle of the 20th century. Pitt stars as the stern patriarch and Jessica Chastain as the forbearing mother to two sons who face a meditative coming-of-age.

Despite the opportunities the film presents to explore a nihilistic perspective about living in an unforgiving universe, Malick’s characteristically lyrical and beautiful filmmaking rejects those notions. He instead embraces the infinitesimal and finds the importance of our finite existence: our relationships with those around us, the world we inhabit, and living with love and forgiveness. Pitt fluently contributes to this towering tapestry, affording a rich sense of interiority to a flawed man who is nonetheless, under Malick’s generous eye, offered some sense of grace.

The finest hour for both Tarantino and Pitt is this novelistic genre movie of epic proportions, all about reclaiming some form of vengeance against one of history’s most grotesque horrors. “Inglourious Basterds” is Tarantino indulging in all of his movie geek hallmarks of pulp entertainment and blustering writing, woven together in a WWII movie tapestry of memorable characters consisting of Holocaust survivors and wardogs all in search of their piece of retribution.

“Inglourious Basterds,” arguably Tarantino’s best movie, is itself a form of cinematic payback, with the director harnessing the power of film as its own weapon, its goal of destabilizing genocidal ideology not dissimilar from Pitt’s Lieutenant Aldo Raine, a troop-leading Nazi hunter with a proclivity for collecting the scalps of his German enemies. The interlacing of his story with that of Jewish survivor Shoshanna (Mélanie Laurent) makes for a thoroughly dynamic war film, as committed to its heightened genre temperament as it is its stark understanding of the world’s history of evil.