The Top 15 Demi Moore Movies Ranked Worst To Best

Though her personal life has sometimes overshadowed her career — that'll happen when you're married to Bruce Willis at the height of his fame, and later, to Ashton Kutcher at the height of his — Demi Moore deserves to be known as an actor rather than a tabloid headline grabber. From her beginnings as a female lead in several generation-defining '80s cult classics to proving she could handle just about any genre in the '90s and beyond, Moore has always made interesting career choices and never let herself get put into one of the narrow boxes that the industry loves to put women into. 

In the 2000s, Moore shifted her priorities a bit toward family life, though she was never absent from the screen for any significant stretch of time. The 2020s has seen Moore come back in a big way, doing some of the best and most fascinating work of her entire career on both the big and small screens. But that's not to say that her best work was only at the beginning of her career and during her current renaissance. As we show here, Demi Moore's greatest works cover the entirety of her career, with movies from each decade of her resumé represented. 

These films and their rankings were determined through a combination of critics' reviews, fan-voted lists, and a little bit of our own editorial insight.

Movies that satirize how much the U.S. is obsessed with consumerism are a dime a dozen, and seemed especially prevalent in the 2000s. But "The Joneses" offers a unique enough premise to help it stand out in an otherwise overstuffed subgenre. It stars Demi Moore, David Duchovny, Ben Hollingsworth, and Amber Heard — a year after her 2008 "Pineapple Express" breakthrough — as the titular Joneses, who are posing as a family but actually work for a marketing company. They have set up shop in an upper class neighborhood in order to turn their unsuspecting new neighbors into clients without them realizing it.

"The Joneses" got decent reviews overall, although critics felt that the movie didn't fully utilize its inventive conceit quite as well as it could have. But strong praise was doled out for both Duchovny and Moore, with The Independent Critic calling it Moore's "best performance in years" and saying she gave it her all even when the script didn't pull its weight. There are actors that are only as good as their material, and their are those that are always good regardless — and Moore definitely falls into the latter camp. 

Though it is centered on the very real 1968 assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, 2006's "Bobby" follows mostly fictional characters who have varying degrees of connection to the hotel where Kennedy was shot — or even Kennedy himself — in the hours before the fateful event takes place. It's an extremely ambitious undertaking with a very large ensemble, and writer-director Emilio Estevez deserves a lot of credit for taking a huge swing with this movie. But as it often goes with this type of film, "Bobby" is an uneven affair that would've done well to have a couple of fewer characters and storylines in order to fully develop the more interesting ones. 

The cast leans a bit too heavy on actors who were mostly only hot at the time — Nick Cannon and Ashton Kutcher retroactively stick out like sore thumbs — but there are still some legacy heavy hitters in the lineup. One of those heavy hitters is Demi Moore, playing a singer whose celebrity peak is well behind her and who has turned to alcohol to deal with her waning fame. Being old friends with Estevez probably helped convince her to take the role, but either way, it's nice to see Moore willing to be in large ensemble pieces despite how famous she was, and that she could appropriately fit into an ensemble and not try to steal every scene she's in. 

While the era of the so-called Brat Pack feels as though it encompassed much of the 1980s, the designation primarily just applied to the casts of two particular films: "The Breakfast Club" and "St. Elmo's Fire." And it's because of the latter film's place in the Brat Pack origin story that Demi Moore got lumped in with the gang despite not seeming to fit in with the rest of the group. That said, her discussions with "St. Elmo Fire" co-star Andrew McCarthy for his 2024 documentary "Brats" proved to be some of the most engaging moments of that entire movie — particularly when she admitted that, at the time, she considered being in the film more important than her own life.

In many ways, 1985's "St. Elmo's Fire" felt like a movie about the kids from John Hughes movies finally entering adulthood, even though it wasn't a John Hughes movie at all (it was directed and co-written by Joel Schumacher). Critics at the time were fairly unimpressed by the coming-of-age tale, which follows a group of college friends who try to maintain their connection to one another as life takes them in different directions after graduation. But audiences embraced it as it went on to become one of the movies that defined Generation X — as well as being an obviously pivotal moment for the still-budding career of Moore. 

Demi Moore has only voiced three animated characters in her entire career. But with each one, she has demonstrated an impressive knack for the form, including her debut in that space in Disney's 1996 animated film "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." Telling a version of the classic Victor Hugo novel, with added songs and a much lighter take on the material, it isn't anyone's favorite Disney entry — and even faced backlash from Victor Hugo's descendants — but there are a lot of things it did right, including the performances of its leads.

Moore provided the speaking voice of Esmeralda, though she unfortunately didn't do the character's singing despite Moore having the pipes to do so. We also won't hold the whitewashed casting of the Caucasian Moore playing a Romani woman against her, as that type of thing unfortunately just wasn't a big deal back then. But the actor truly shined in the role, with her famous voice never once overpowering the performance, making it easy to forget that it was Moore playing the character. And Moore clearly enjoyed playing Esmeralda, as she was one of the rare A-listers to reprise their role for a direct-to-video sequel when she came back for 2002's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame II." 

Demi Moore has only put on her producer hat a handful of times — most notably, for all three "Austin Powers" films. Her second-ever credit as a producer was on the 1995 coming-of-age dramedy "Now and Then," in which she also stars. The movie sees four adult women reminiscing about a particularly special summer they shared together 25 years earlier, going back and forth between the telling of the stories and seeing the stories actually play out.

Moore plays adult Samantha, mirrored by Gaby Hoffmann as Samantha's younger self. Hoffmann plays a believable tween Demi Moore, with the pair being arguably the best adult actor-child actor match of the four duos. To that end, the younger actors do most of the heavy lifting in the movie and are essentially the stars of the show, though Moore and co-stars Rosie O'Donnell, Rita Wilson, and Melanie Griffith have great chemistry together and make their scenes more than just filler while waiting for the next nostalgia-fueled youth adventure.  

Critics were pretty hard on the movie, to the tune of only 33% on Rotten Tomatoes. But the 82% Popcornmeter score shows that "Now and Then" is one of those films that was a better fit for audiences that chose to give in to its syrupy sweet charms rather than be cynical about them.

If "St. Elmo's Fire" was Demi Moore first opening the door to her new phase as an adult actor, the following year's "About Last Night" saw her kicking it down and charging in head-first. In fact, in his review of "About Last Night," Roger Ebert said, "this is the movie 'St. Elmo's Fire' should have been." It follows yuppies Debbie (Moore) and Dan (fellow "St. Elmo" co-star Rob Lowe) as they go on a steamy first date, after which they navigate the path of whether or not their undeniable sexual chemistry can translate into an equally strong emotional bond.

Though it doesn't get nearly as risqué as the David Mamet play on which it was based — 1974's "Sexual Perversity in Chicago" — "About Last Night" does very much earn its R rating through its unflinching dialogue, even though the nudity is only of the partial variety. It's a surprisingly mature look at sex and relationships, for a decade in which theaters were rarely far removed from the latest raunchy comedy that reveled in debauched excess. And it was as good an announcement of Demi Moore as more than just the star of light movies about teens and young adults as any actress of the era could have hoped for. 

Demi Moore and Bruce Willis made only two movies together. The first, 1991 thriller "Mortal Thoughts," wasn't worthy of making this list. However, the couple made up for that disappointing team-up when they voiced estranged lovers Muddy and Dallas in the 1996 animated hit "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America." The power couple don't just show up for quick cameos either, as Muddy hiring the titular duo to "do" his wife is what sets the plot in motion, with both Muddy and Dallas frequently interacting with both the boys and each other throughout the movie.

Both Moore and Willis are clearly having a great time here, of course having chemistry in their scenes together but also doing great work bouncing off Mike Judge, who voices both Beavis and Butt-Head. It probably added to the experience and surely didn't hurt either of their feelings that the movie was not only well-received critically but gave Moore yet another animated box office hit for 1996 to go along with "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." 

Given that her other two 1996 films were "The Juror" and "Striptease" — two of the worst-rated movies of Moore's career — she was probably feeling pretty good about choosing to knock out a couple of animated movies that year as well. 

Savage Steve Holland became a hero to quirky Gen X youth when he wrote and directed back-to-back cult classics "Better Off Dead" (1985) and "One Crazy Summer" (1986). And while both of those movies are primarily vehicles for then-rising star John Cusack — even though the former was a movie he regrets filming — they both also had casts filled out by some of the best young talent around at the time. For "One Crazy Summer," that included Demi Moore, though it found her taking a detour back to teen movies after already attempting to leave those days behind with "About Last Night," which came out the month prior.

The plot of "One Crazy Summer" is mostly just an excuse to string together a series of over-the-top scenes, gags, and set pieces, but as it stands, it's about a teenager named Hoops McCann (Cusack) and how he spends the summer after graduating high school. An inspiring rocker named Cassandra (Moore) finds her way into the wild misadventures of Hoops and his friends, with the two sparking a romance along the way. 

Holland's movies seemed like they were made specifically to be underappreciated in their day by anyone but teenagers and destined to become beloved cult classics to those teenagers when they became adults, and that's exactly what happened with "One Crazy Summer." Every well-rounded acting oeuvre needs at least one such film, and Demi Moore gets to claim a pretty cool one here. 

Though it's another wasted opportunity that doesn't make use of Demi Moore's singing ability — as it's a musical that she has no songs in — 2022's "Please Baby Please" is nonetheless an excellent showcase for the actor. Well, to be fair, it's even more of a showcase for star Andrea Riseborough. She's a revelation as Suze, a Manhattan square who soon finds herself and her husband changed — that is to say, shown their true selves — by the flamboyant residents of their Lower East Side neighborhood. 

Moore's appearance in the movie is brief, but she makes the most of her limited screen time as neighbor Maureen, who is as stylish as she is mysterious. Campiness is the order of the day in "Please Baby Please," and Moore understands the assignment, as does everyone in this musical that Rotten Tomatoes perfectly described as "West Side Story" by way of John Waters.   

As hard as it is to talk about Woody Allen these days — let alone give him praise — there's no denying his ability to get the best out of his actors. Average actors become great actors under his direction and reading his dialogue, while great actors become even greater. Demi Moore only did one film with Allen, but she got the chance to do a pretty fun one in the 1997 black comedy "Deconstructing Harry."

Allen plays Harry, a writer who is on a trip to a university where he is to be honored. Seems simple enough, except that the journey also involves having to reckon with both real-life friends he has become estranged from, and the fictional characters he has created for his books. Moore plays a member of the latter group, a therapist character from one of Harry's stories who takes on the role of a real therapist and makes him deal with some of his demons. 

It was the perfect point for Moore to check the Woody Allen box on her acting bucket list, as it would the last of his movies to get a best original screenplay Oscar nomination — a nomination he had been all but guaranteed to get anytime he released a movie up to that point — until 2005's "Match Point," indicating an iffy patch for him in the years in between.

While Demi Moore kicked off the 2010s with the absolutely dreadful action film "Bunraku," she immediately course-corrected by following that up with her best movie in 15 years: 2011's "Margin Call." It might not have gotten the same attention or accolades as "The Big Short" or "Too Big To Fail," but "Margin Call" is still a worthy addition to the pantheon of movies about the 2008 financial crisis. In fact, The New Yorker even went so far as to proclaim it "the best Wall Street movie ever made" in its review.

Centering around fictional people and an unnamed firm rather than using real people and companies, "Margin Call" takes place over the course of a single day at the very beginning of the collapse. Moore plays Sarah Robertson, the firm's chief risk management officer who, along with other key figures at the company, needs to decide how seriously to take the direction things seem to be going in. Moore is great here, managing to stand out even among a talented ensemble — Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci, Mary McDonnell, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto, and others — all doing top-notch work themselves. 

After getting her start as Jackie Templeton, the character everyone forgets Demi Moore played in "General Hospital," the actor did very little TV outside of cameos once her big screen career got going. A notable exception — prior, that is, to later stints on the shows "Empire," "Brave New World," and "Feud: Capote vs. The Swans" — came when Moore starred in the 1996 HBO movie "If These Walls Could Talk." The fact that it was one of her best films to date, and remains so to this day, shows that she knew it was a role she couldn't pass up despite it being on the small screen.

An anthology, "If These Walls Could Talk" is divided up into segments taking place in 1952, 1975, and the present day (1996 in the film). While each segment features a different set of actors playing a different set of characters, what connects them all is that each centers around a woman who is facing the choice of whether or not to have an abortion. 

Moore is that woman in the 1952 segment, who is dealing with not only the difficulty of the decision itself but the fact that she's living at a time when the procedure is completely illegal. Her performance earned her a Golden Globe nomination, while being a producer on the film earned her an additional Golden Globe nod as well as a Primetime Emmy nomination. 

One of the most enduring single images of Demi Moore's career is her sitting at a pottery wheel with Patrick Swayze behind her, which of course comes from the iconic 1990 romance movie "Ghost." Moore plays Molly, whose husband Sam (Swayze) is murdered in a random street mugging — or was it? As the mystery unfolds as to the real reason Sam was killed, Molly finds out that Sam is a ghost and can communicate with her through Oda Mae (Whoopi Goldberg). Oda Mae is just as surprised as anyone to discover that she can actually communicate with the spirit world, after previously just pretending to do so to scam people. 

"Ghost" somehow manages to come together despite its seemingly gimmicky concept and a story that could have easily descended into the deepest depths of melodrama. While it arguably proved to be a bigger showcase for Goldberg than anyone else — earning her the Oscar that got her halfway to eventually becoming one of the performers who has won an EGOT — Moore still demonstrates her impressive range and holds her own even when she's acting opposite Goldberg's larger-than-life performance.

When you think of the landmark 1992 military legal drama "A Few Good Men," your thoughts probably go straight to the intense courtroom sparring between Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson as Lieutenant Kaffee and Colonel Jessep, respectively. And certainly, Jessep being on trial for his alleged role in covering up the death of a soldier and being interrogated in court by Kaffee comprises some of the most pivotal scenes in the movie — not to mention that it all leads to the iconic line that Jack Nicholson improvised. But there is a lot more happening in "A Few Good Men," and many more actors involved in the periphery.

One of those actors is Demi Moore, who plays Lieutenant Commander Galloway, one of Kaffee's superiors. Like almost everyone in the movie that isn't Cruise or Nicholson, Moore's work in the film is unfairly overlooked when considering the legacy of "A Few Good Men." But the movie not only reinforced that she was indeed one of Hollywood's best actors, it was seen by many as the best movie she'd ever done. And it might have held that honor forever, if not for the out-of-left-field 2024 film that immediately became her new best movie.  

It's easy to accuse anyone who considers "The Substance" as Demi Moore's best-ever movie to be blinded by recency bias. But even though this list is being published while the movie is still in theaters, we feel confident that the film's placement at the top of this list will age well in the years to come — that is, unless she happens to make an even better movie in the meantime.

A 2024 body horror movie combined with a satire on celebrity beauty standards, "The Substance" sees Moore play a formerly popular movie star named Elisabeth Sparkle who is facing irrelevance as she turns the supposedly ripe old age of 50. She is offered a treatment that creates a limited-time doppelganger that is a younger version of herself, which she soon abuses beyond its recommended guidelines, causing the aforementioned body horror aspects of the film to come to the fore. 

Not only has it become Moore's highest-rated movie of all time, but the Rotten Tomatoes critical consensus declares it to be "possibly Demi Moore's finest hour." "The Substance" is the kind of movie that it's best to watch with as little information as possible, so as much as we'd love to dig a lot more deeply into why Moore is so brilliant in it, we'll have to just advise you to see it for yourself — assuming you don't have a weak stomach.