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Angelina Jolie is an action movie star, leading lady, Oscar-winning actress and overall badass female and today is her birthday.
If you can believe it, today Jolie turns 44 years old and she’s just as strikingly beautiful and fiercely sought after in the entertainment industry as she was back in the ’90s when she first came on the scene.
In addition to getting media attention thanks to her personal life—she’s been married to some mega stars throughout her life—and her humanitarian efforts, Jolie’s film career has been one hit after the next.
She’s starred in franchises like Tomb Raider as Lara Croft and made us love her as an animated character in the Kung Fu Panda films and that’s barely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to her successes.
Her first big movie was Hackers back in 1995, which has since become a cult classic and her most-recent Disney venture was as the super villain Maleficent in Maleficent…which has a sequel coming out next year.
She’s effortlessly played an assassin more times than we can count and somehow manages to wow us no matter how similar the plots might appear on paper.
Jolie is intriguing, mysterious, stunning and memorable in both her real life and her on-screen life, which is what makes her career that much more enticing.
In honor of the Los Angeles native’s birthday this year, we’re taking a look back at all of her thrilling film roles throughout her nearly three-decade long career.
Make sure to vote for your favorite movie from Jolie’s catalog below and then wish her a happy birthday on social media!
MGM
Hackers
This 1995 crime film about hackers being blamed for a virus causing oil tankers to capsize was Angelina Jolie’s first leading role in a major film.
20th Century Fox
Pushing Tin
Jolie met her second husband, Billy Bob Thornton, while filming this comedy about air traffic controllers.
Columbia Pictures
Girl, Interrupted
For her role as sociopath Lisa Rowe in the 1999 film, Jolie won the Golden Globe, Academy Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Supporting Actress.
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Touchstone Pictures
Gone in 60 Seconds
The 2000 heist film featured a gang assembling to steal 50 cars, all dubbed with female names.
Paramount Pictures
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
The 44-year-old actress plays the titular role in the 2001 action flick and two years later she reprised her role in the sequel. In the first film, video game adventurer Lara Croft comes to life in a movie where she finds herself trying to recover ancient artifacts before she runs out of time or gets taken out by villains. The sequel shows Lara Croft back in action, this time trying to save the mythical Pandora’s Box.
20th Century Fox
Life or Something Like It
The 2002 romantic comedy focuses on Jolie’s character trying to find the meaning of life after a psychic tells her she will die in seven days.
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Warner Bros. Pictures
Alexander
The epic historical drama was based on the life of Alexander the Great. In the film, Jolie plays the beautiful Olympias.
20th Century Fox
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
On the set of the 2005 action film, Jolie met future husband Brad Pitt. Although the marriage didn’t last, the film, which is about a married couple that discovers they are both assassins hired to kill one another, is a forever favorite.
Universal Studios
The Good Shepherd
The 2006 spy film tells the untold tale of the birth of counter-intelligence in the CIA.
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Paramount Vantage
A Mighty Heart
The 2007 film is based on the kidnapping of Daniel Pearl, an American journalist traveling in Pakistan. Jolie plays his wife, Marianne, as she seeks justice for her husband.
Paramount Pictures
Beowulf
Jolie famously shot her role of Grendel’s mother in the 2007 fantasy film over a two-day period while she was three months pregnant with her twins.
DreamWorks Animation
Kung Fu Panda
The actress proved her voice is just as impressive as her acting skills when she took on the role of Tigress in 2008’s Kung Fu Panda. She also plays the tiger warrior in its two sequels.
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Universal Studios
Changeling
Jolie was nominated for her second Academy Award for her role as a mother on a mission to find her missing son in this 2008 drama film set in the 1920s.
Universal Pictures
Wanted
The Los Angeles native’s character is an experienced assassin in this 2008 action flick, which was a massive hit at the box office, grossing 341.1 million.
Columbia Pictures
Salt
Talk about a powerful role! Jolie plays an agent on the run named Evelyn Salt in this thriller film.
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Columbia Pictures
The Tourist
Both Johnny Depp and Jolie were nominated for Golden Globes for their roles as a couple who meet in Italy and later find themselves on the run together.
Disney
Maleficent
Jolie gets fabulously nasty in the 2014 Disney flick as the evil Maleficent who curses the infant Princess Aurora—Sleeping Beauty—only to realize the child may be the only one who can restore peace.
Merrick Morton/Universal Pictures
By the Sea
In 2015, Jolie and Pitt reunited on screen to play a couple trying to repair their marriage while staying at a hotel in France.
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