The Biggest Angelina Jolie Movies Of All Time

Angelina Jolie isn't just a famous actor — she's one of those rare modern stars who evokes the aura of classic movie glamour (that she comes from Hollywood royalty doesn't hurt; her father is Jon Voight). Her life off-screen is just as widely publicized as her exploits on the silver screen, and her most famous movies derived much of their success from audiences wanting to see her rather than just tuning in for the latest franchise installment. In establishing this kind of public persona, Jolie has managed to score numerous box office hits that have ensured her fame is in no danger of evaporating. Such hits span a whole variety of genres, from family movies to challenging dramas to exciting action films where Jolie makes big things explode.

This level of versatility ensures that, no matter what your interests are, it's likely Jolie has starred in a movie that's up your alley. Such dexterity also explains how Jolie's films have managed to gross a combined $6.4 billion at the worldwide box office. Much of that impressive haul comes from her highest-grossing movies of all time. It must be said that a handful of these features weren't successful, with some failing to turn a profit on particularly hefty budgets. However, across Jolie's biggest movies, one does begin to appreciate the qualities that have made her such a compelling rarity among 21st-century movie stars. Here's a selection of Angelina Jolie's top-grossing hits. Note: Using this criterion means we're omitting some of the roles she's most famous for, like the cult favorite Girl, Interrupted. We've also left off fully animated flicks like Kung Fu Panda.

Crime thrillers dominated the 1990s movie scene. One of the last big entries in this trend came in 1999 with The Bone Collector. Combining the star power of Denzel Washington with Angelina Jolie, this adaptation of the Jeffrey Deaver novel of the same name was full of twists, turns, and a demented killer. The combination of these hallmarks of 1990s crime thrillers, not to mention the presence of two big-name actors, ensured that The Bone Collector would find some level of box office success.

Opening theatrically in November 1999, The Bone Collector snagged $151.4 million worldwide, including a $66.4 million domestic total. The fact that Weaver's original book wasn't quite as popular as, say, the average John Grisham novel kept it from matching the highest-grossing crime thrillers of this decade in the domestic market. This was also one of Jolie's earliest star vehicles, meaning she didn't have the same draw that attracted audiences in droves to later films like Salt. Still, on a $45 million budget, the film was profitable and, even better for its leading lady, it was the first movie Jolie appeared in to crack $50 million domestically. Crime thrillers weren't quite as popular in the 2000s and beyond as they were in the '90s, but the same wasn't true for Jolie. This movie was a breakthrough moment for the performer, and the first of many box office hits yet to come.

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer and star Nicolas Cage had delivered a number of box office hits for Disney's Touchstone Pictures division throughout the 1990s. With their 2000 film Gone in 60 Seconds, they aimed to keep that track record alive and well in the 21st century. For this feature, Cage paired off with Angelina Jolie as the film's female lead. Put those together in a movie dropped in the middle of June and Gone in 60 Seconds was poised for box office glory.

Though not as big as then-recent Cage vehicles like The Rock, Gone in 60 Seconds still grossed $232.6 million worldwide, a slight improvement over the worldwide gross of then-recent Cage action film Con Air. Sometimes, all audiences want to see is famous people delivering cheesy one-liners and cars going fast, especially when it's boiling hot outside. The fact that this project was a remake of a famous 1970s movie also gave it brand recognition with moviegoers. Those qualities fueled the worldwide haul of Gone in 60 Seconds, which became the highest-grossing movie Jolie had appeared in up to that point. It wouldn't be long before Jolie would no longer have to play second fiddle to Cage, but would get to headline her own explosion-laden summer blockbusters. Interestingly, the box office run for Gone in 60 Seconds was later overshadowed by subsequent and controversial reports that Disney claimed the film lost $212 million for the studio.

With 2001's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Angelina Jolie didn't just deliver the rare hit video game movie. She solidified herself as an action movie star as well as the rare lady entrusted with major Hollywood action blockbusters in a pre-Katniss Everdeen world. The reasons for the film's success aren't a grand mystery. Lara Croft had been a popular video game character all throughout the 1990s. Over that same period, Jolie had obtained a similar level of fame. Audiences wanted more from her, and Lara Croft offered an opportunity for Jolie to take center stage and kick butt all on her own.

Combining two staples of 1990s pop culture resulted in a major hit that grossed $273.3 million worldwide. That was roughly triple the film's $94 million budget. In fact, its $131.4 million domestic gross made it the highest-grossing video game movie domestically until Pokemon: Detective Pikachu opened in 2019. Jolie proved she was capable of headlining her own hits; meanwhile, studios confirmed the viability of video game movie adaptations. Basically, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was a total win that reaffirmed the value of both Lara Croft and Angelina Jolie as pop culture icons.

With the first live-action Lara Croft movie, audiences were getting something they hadn't seen before. The famous video game character was now a flesh-and-blood person inhabited by one of the most famous movie stars of the moment. With that novelty worn off and the initial feature generating mixed word-of-mouth from moviegoers, though, the 2003 sequel, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider — The Cradle of Life, was going to need to work overtime to convince audiences to return to the theater.

Unfortunately, the film's marketing rested on its laurels, which included refusing to emphasize new exciting villains for Lara Croft to face as well as releasing a poster whose title was largely obscured by the body of Lara Croft. Without promising anything new to prospective ticket buyers, The Cradle of Life underwhelmed at the box office with just $157 million worldwide. Not only was that beneath the worldwide gross of its predecessor, but it simply wasn't good on its own terms. That kind of gross didn't put the movie anywhere near being profitable given that it carried a $90 million price tag. The allure of seeing Jolie play Lara Croft was enough to turn the first movie in this franchise into a hit. The Cradle of Life, proved, though, that this prospect wasn't enough to get people to show up a second time. This put an end to the franchise until 2018's resurrection with Alicia Vikander. 

You don't normally associate Oliver Stone with epic sword-and-sandals movies, but that's just what the Platoon helmer directed with the 2004 feature Alexander. This biopic on Alexander the Great had a star-studded cast (with Anthony Hopkins, Val Kilmer, Christopher Plummer, Jared Leto, and Colin Farrell), including Angelina Jolie in the female lead, tons of lavish production value, and also a lot of pre-release controversy centered on the film's depiction of its lead character's sexuality. All of this resulted in a film that should have been a box office sensation people couldn't stop talking about.

In the end, Alexander did drum up conversation, just not the way Stone or Jolie hoped. The film ended up grossing only $167.2 million worldwide on a $155 million budget, with an anemic $34 million of that coming from a blink-and-miss-it domestic run. Like a number of movies in Jolie's filmography, international audiences flocked to see her in anything, but domestic audiences were more cautious unless she was either wielding a gun or wearing horns.

Even so, the worldwide box office run of Alexander was a devastating loss that resulted in the financiers of the movie losing over $71 million. Stone blamed the disastrous performance on "moral fundamentalism," though another problem may have simply been spending an excessive amount of money on an Alexander the Great movie in 2004. Stone isn't widely associated with movies like Alexander and the box office tanking of this project ensures he likely won't return to this style of filmmaking in the future.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith was a throwback to an era when the presence of a celebrity couple was enough to get people to buy ticket. Though today it's the presence of a Marvel Studios or DC Comics logo that gets people into multiplexes, throughout the years, there have been plenty of examples of movies headlined by lovestruck stars that became box office hits. So it was with 2005's Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which starred then-lovers Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. The press couldn't get enough of this duo and neither could the public.

All of that passion meant that pairing them up for the action/comedy vehicle Mr. and Mrs. Smith was bound to result in a box office smash. Still, nobody could have predicted that Mr. and Mrs. Smith would end up being as big as it was with a massive $486.1 million worldwide. The appeal of Pitt and Jolie was a large reason for this movie's success. However, its emphasis on big action set pieces and sultry romance ensured that it had plenty of appeal for moviegoers who weren't enamored with the real-world escapades of Pitt and Jolie. Not a lot of modern box office hits derive from their success from off-screen romances but Mr. and Mrs. Smith proved this element could still boost ticket sales in the modern world (a theory cast into doubt by the 2003 Ben Affleck-J. Lo vehicle and box office flop Gigli).

In the summer of 2008, action movies were riding high. Iron Man had turned Robert Downey Jr. in a metal suit into a new star of the genre, while the likes of Hancock and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull reaffirmed the star power of some of the biggest names ever in the action movie field. This success even saw totally original mid-budget titles flourishing, like the Angelina Jolie vehicle Wanted.

Though ostensibly starring James McAvoy, Wanted was sold as an Angelina Jolie vehicle, hoping to cash in on her high level of success headlining action fare like Mr. and Mrs. Smith and the original Lara Croft. Those hopes quickly turned into a reality once Wanted hit theaters in June 2008 and grossed a robust $342.4 million worldwide. This figure was made all the more impressive by how Wanted carried an R rating, which should've limited its appeal. Instead, all those grisly shootouts made it stand out in a summertime marketplace full of PG-13 flicks. Summer 2008 was a good time for action movies and Wanted rode that rising tide to extremely high places at the worldwide box office.

With Changeling, Angelina Jolie got to work with director Clint Eastwood for the first time. The collaboration centered on a mother who loses her son only to become embroiled in a larger conspiracy covering up the kidnappings of children. The movie's subject matter was extraordinarily bleak. That's not the kind of approach that usually results in a box office hit, and while Changeling was far from a smash hit, it still did OK business at the worldwide box office.

Grossing $113.8 million worldwide, Changeling took in a decent but not remarkable $35 million domestically. Competition from other adult dramas in November 2008 certainly played a role in this one not doing better domestically, as did the fact that audiences weren't accustomed to seeing Jolie heading such brutally dark fare. Changeling did very well overseas, though, as Jolie's star power proved attractive to international moviegoers. It more than doubled its domestic box office in the international markets with a $78 million haul. With those kinds of figures, Changeling was able to double its $55 million budget and became one of Jolie's higher-grossing forays into dramatic acting. 

With its harrowing premise, Changeling was never going to be a profit-making phenomenon and nobody was expecting to do Lara Croft-level business. Thankfully, its eventual worldwide haul proved adequate.

Though it's one of Angelina Jolie's highest-grossing movies, The Tourist is widely considered a box office disappointment of sorts. That's understandable given the kind of star power the film carried. The Tourist was the first union between Jolie and Johnny Depp, then hot off $1+ billion hits like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Alice in Wonderland. Combining the two into one movie released during the end-of-the-year holidays seemed like a recipe for one of the biggest releases of 2010.

The Tourist did end up becoming a solid performer internationally with a $211 million haul. For comparison's sake, fellow Christmas 2010 blockbuster Tron: Legacy did only $16 million more overseas. A European thriller about mistaken identity really resonated with non-U.S. audiences. However, The Tourist was a total wipeout domestically with just $67 million — less than what Depp had amassed on opening weekend for his biggest prior films. In the end, The Tourist wound up with $278.7 million worldwide on a $100 million budget, which wasn't a terrible result, but certainly wasn't up to pre-release expectations. That same year, Jolie's Salt had managed to make more worldwide without giving her a famous co-star. In the end, this was one of those box office disappointments that was not the sum of its star-studded parts.

Fresh off Wanted, which proved that she could lure in action movie crowds even without a famous video game brand on the poster, Angelina Jolie headlined Salt in the summer of 2010. A mystery thriller all about pondering if a seemingly normal woman was actually an enemy spy, Salt was definitely made in the 2000s gritty spy movie mold of your average Bourne movie. Though it may not have been totally original, it certainly served up what audiences wanted and it managed to do well worldwide as a result.

In its worldwide box office run, Salt grossed $290.6 million, $118.3 million of which came from its domestic run. Those domestic figures were especially impressive given that Salt opened just one week after the sleeper blockbuster hit Inception. Turns out there was more than enough room in the July 2010 domestic marketplace for two big action movie hits. While its $130 million budget kept it from being a super profitable exercise, Salt still performed fine for a non-sequel feature that was basically getting by solely on the appeal of Angelina Jolie as an action star. Much like Wanted two years prior, Salt showed that Jolie was somebody audiences loved to see beating people up.

Maleficent was the first time Jolie stepped in front of the camera in a few years. Not since The Tourist had Jolie headlined a live-action film, with her focus shifting over to directing. Playing one of the most iconic animated Disney villains in Maleficent was certainly the kind of momentous opportunity that would get Jolie to return to acting. However, there were understandable pre-release concerns over whether or not this film could stand out, given that Spider-Man, Godzilla, and the X-Men all had new movies coming out in May 2014.

Those concerns were unwarranted. As the one big PG-rated live-action film released through May and June 2014, Maleficent was able to soar above expectations thanks to a lack of family movie competition. Positive reviews kept the movie around in theaters for quite a while, ensuring that, unlike other summer 2014 releases, Maleficent was not a one-weekend hit. It didn't hurt that this was just the kind of role people like to see Jolie in as well as the enduring appeal of the Maleficent character. Jolie hadn't appeared in a movie in a while prior to headlining Maleficent, but the $758.5 million worldwide haul of this blockbuster indicated that her star appeal hadn't faded. 

A little over five years after the first Maleficent, Disney released Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, which aimed to chronicle the further exploits of this revised version of the classic Disney villain. The feature arrived in a different marketplace than its predecessor. For one thing, the film was opening in October 2019, when other major family movies were also opening. Compare that to the original Maleficent's May 2014 release date, which had far less family movie competition to deal with. An extended five-year gap between films didn't help matters.

In the end, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil ended up doing just fine overseas, where it made nearly $400 million. This was a lower overseas haul than the first installment, but still a fine gross. Domestically, though, that was a whole other story, with Mistress of Evil making less than half of its predecessor at just $113.9 million. That was even behind the $114.7 million domestic gross of notorious Disney box office bomb Dumbo from that same year, and that film didn't have Jolie's famous face to help it.

In the end, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil made a sizable $489.3 million worldwide on a $185 million budget. While domestically at least it looked like Jolie's take on the character had worn out its welcome, the strong worldwide haul reaffirmed Jolie's pull with international audiences.