The 32 greatest Brad Pitt movies

Ocean's Eleven
(Image credit: Warner Bros. Pictures)

Ever since he bit necks in Interview with the Vampire and opened a dreadful box in Seven, Brad Pitꦫt has enjoyed one of the most pro♏lific careers in Hollywood. With a vast profile of movies to his name, it begs the question: Just which of Brad Pitt's movies are the greatest of all time?

Just two weeks short of graduating from the University of Missouri, Brad Pitt went to Hollywood and started working as an actor. Beginning with minor guest roles in television shows like Growing Pains, Dallas, 21 Jump Street, and Freddy's Nightmares, his fဣame grew after he beat out other major actors for the role of a hot hitchhiker in Ridley Scott's 1991 classic Thelma & Louise. After a string of hits like A River Runs Through It (1992), Interview with the Vampire (1994), and Seven (1995), Pitt's career took off like a rocket.

With a face made for glossy magazines but real talent to back him up, Brad💙 Pitt is the textbook definiti𝔉on of a Hollywood star. In celebration of his career, here are 32 of his greatest movies of all time.

32. Cutting Class (1989)

Cutting Class

(Image credit: Republic Pictures)

Long before Brad Pitt was an Oscar-winning actor, he starred in the schlocky '80s teen slasher Cutting Class, directed by Rospo Pallenberg. At a typical suburban high school, the return of a troubled student sparks a strange rash of murders on campus. Brad Pitt has a major supporting role as swoon-worthy rebel Dwight, whose lush hair and bright red jacket feels evocative of James Dean. While Cutting Class doesn't exactly pass with flying colors - even given the low bar for '80s slashers - it's still a delightful midnight movie wo🔯rth seeking out, if only because it's got a young Brad Pitt still cutting his teeth as a soon-to-๊be superstar. 

31. Meet Joe Black (1998)

Meet Joe Black

(Image credit: Universal Pictures)

In Martin Brest's handsome but bloated romantic fantasy, Brad Pitt starts the film playing a young, charismatic man who enchants female lead Susan (Claire Forlani) at a coffee shop. The man is then abruptly killed outside by traffic. But Death itself has other plans, and inhabits the man's body to better understand humanity while guiding an aging media executive (Anthony Hopkins) during his last days on Earth. Alth♎ough it clocks in at an unnecessarily long three hours, Brad Pitt asserts his talents as a Hollywood leading male in the part of a curious specter who learns just how beautiful it can be to be💯 human.

30. Seven Years in Tibet (1997)

Seven Years in Tibet

(Image credit: Sony Pictures Releasing)

Based on Heinrich Harrer's 1952 memoir, Seven Years in Tibet stars Brad Pitt as real-life Austrian mountaineer and sportsman Heinrich, whose attempts to climb Nanga Parbat in British-ruled India coincides with the start of World War II. Because of his status as enemy aliens, he is imprisoned at a POW camp in the Himalayas; he later escapes to Tibet, where he becomes tutor to the 14th Dalai Lama. While controver൲sial to the point it was censored in China, Seven Years in Tibet is a rudimentary travel movie coated in warm color hues, with serious aid by renowned composer John Wi💙lliams and revered cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

29. Cool World (1992)

Cool World

(Image credit: Paramount Pictures)

Hot off the heels of Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1988, prolific animator Ralph Bakshi seized his chance to return to the big screen with his high-concept animated hybrid Cool World. Brad Pitt stars as a World War II vet who, after a motorcycle accident, is transported into a parallel cartoon universe and starts a new life as a private detective. Originating as a horror movie, Cool World was changed by its producers in an attempt to make it a mass-appealing film, instead of a riskier R-rated movie. In🍌 the end, Cool World bombed hard with both critics and audiences. In hindsight though, Cool World is easily one of Pitt's strangest and must-see movies of his career, a jagged-edge oddity that colors outside the lines.

24. Thelma & Louise (1991)

Thelma & Louise

(Image credit: MGM-Pathé Communications)

In Ridley Scott's timeless road movie about two women on the lam, Brad Pitt has a star-making turn as a vagabond stud named J.D.. While J.D. has minimal screen time, the part elevated Pitt's recognition around Hollywood, allowing him to star in bigger, high-profile movies in the years that followed. Although Pitt auditioned, he was 😼initially passed over on the basis that Scott felt he was too young. (Other men considered were George Clooney, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, John Mellancamp, and Dermot Mulroney.) After Scott's main choice Billy Baldwin dropped out of the movie, Pitt was hired after actress Geena Davis screen tested with him and she insisted Pitt was the man they're looking for.

3. Seven (1995)

Seven

(Image credit: New Line Cinema)

By the end of David Fincher's S🎐even, we're all screaming: "What's in the box?" In this searing psychological thriller and undisputed n✤eo-noir classic, a serial killer stages a violent spree after the Biblical Seven Deadly Sins. Two detectives, played by Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt, butt heads as they work to track him down. While early development of Seven almost saw the film remove its memorable ending (due to negative responses from test audiences), Pitt, who had star power after Interview with the Vampire, insisted the film keep its ending. He cited his own disappointment with Legends of the Fall compromising its story over test audiences as his main reason.

2. Ocean's Eleven (2001)

Ocean's Eleven

(Image credit: Warner Bros. Pictures)

A modernized remake of the 1960 Rat Pack classic, Steven Soderbergh's handsome and breezy remake is arguably better than the original. George Clooney and Brad Pitt star as a pair of con men who lead an ensemble of specialists - all played by Bernie Mac, Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, and more - on a heist to steal $160 million from a Las Vegas casino. This casino, by the way, happens to be owned by the new lover of Clo𒊎oney's characters' ex-wife (Julia Roberts). A perfect studio movie if there ev⛎er was one, Ocean's Eleven drips style and swagger in a way few movies ever can dream of. 

1. Killing Them Softly (2012)

Killing Them Softly

(Image credit: The Weinstein Company)

A knife-sharp sati♏re of Obama-era optimism in the disguise of a violent gangster thriller, Brad Pitt anchors Andrew Dominik's movie Killing Them Softly as a mob hitman tasked with looking into a poker game robbery. In this movie, Pitt is undeniably the coolest he has ever been (and that's saying something) as a chain-smoking, black-clad killer who doesn't mind working for amoral men so long as he gets paid. Killing Them Soꩲftly may not be Brad Pitt's most popular movie, but there's no question that it is one of his greatest.

Eric Francisco is a freelance entertainment journalist and graduate of Rutgers University. If a movie or TV show has superheroes, spaceships, kung fu, or John Cena, he's your guy to make sense of it. A former senior writer at Inverse, his byline has also appeared at Vulture, The Daily Beast, Observer, and The Mary Sue. You can find him screaming at Devils hockey games or dodging enemy fire in Call🍸 of Duty: Warz꧅one.