All 10 Best Margaret Qualley Movies Ranked (Best to Worst)

Coralie Fargeat’s relentless, blood-drenched indictment of toxic beauty standards operates with the maximalist force of an industrial press. Anchored by visceral sound design and razor-sharp prosthetic fury, the satire follows a discarded television icon whose illicit cellular gamble births Sue, an intoxicating vision of youthful perfection who rapidly spins out of control. It is an unsparing, hallucinatory assault on Hollywood’s disposable treatment of aging women. Playing Sue requires an almost impossible balance of plastic effervescence and feral entitlement, and Qualley delivers her definitive performance. She uses her dancer’s geometry to weaponize aerobics and seduction before descending into monstrous, unchecked vanity, cementing her standing as a fearless leading force in modern cinema.

Quentin Tarantino’s elegiac love letter to the twilight of golden-era studio Hollywood marries nostalgic hangout vibes with an undercurrent of impending historical dread. Recreating 1969 Los Angeles with obsessive production design and hypnotic radio soundscapes, the picture drifts between Leonardo DiCaprio’s fading TV cowboy and Brad Pitt’s stoic stuntman as the Manson shadow looms over Cielo Drive. As Pussycat, the hitchhiking flower child who lures Pitt’s Cliff Booth out to the Spahn Movie Ranch, Qualley turned a handful of scenes into an indelible pop-culture flashpoint. Her magnetic insolence and barefoot swagger provided the narrative’s pivotal turning point, transforming her from a promising indie talent into an internationally recognized screen presence.

Shane Black’s 1970s neo-noir comedy crackles with razor-sharp patter, smoggy Los Angeles decadence, and exquisite slapstick choreography. Built around the chaotic odd-couple chemistry of Ryan Gosling’s bumbling investigator and Russell Crowe’s brutish enforcer, the narrative unravels a labyrinthine conspiracy linking murdered adult-film starlets with automotive emissions cover-ups. Qualley functions as the elusive plot catalyst, Amelia Kuttner, a radical activist whose frantic evasion sets the entire machinery into motion. Though operating from the margins of a high-octane buddy comedy, her intense gaze and frayed, desperate righteousness gave the film’s madcap mayhem genuine stakes, marking her first major arrival inside studio filmmaking.

Yorgos Lanthimos strips away the gilded excess of his period pieces to deliver an icy, pitch-black triptych about control, emotional subjugation, and the desperate hunger for belonging. Shot with clinical detachment and scored with jarring piano stabs, the film explores three surreal vignettes where loyalty morphs into grotesque obedience and self-inflicted psychological torture. Re-teaming with the Greek auteur, Qualley seamlessly shifts across multiple identities, most remarkably as a dog-obsessed cult recruit and a miraculous twin. Her innate strangeness and biting deadpan cadence blend effortlessly into Lanthimos’s cold, absurdist universe, demonstrating an adventurous spirit willing to embrace the most uncompromising corners of arthouse cinema.

Maggie Betts’s solemn, emotionally layered period drama examines the seismic shifts within the Catholic Church during the Second Vatican Council through the cloistered halls of a rural convent. The film captures the suffocating stillness of monastic life with painterly lighting and quiet reverence, detailing how institutional devotion often clashes violently with human intimacy and spiritual autonomy. As Sister Cathleen, a young novice wrestling with agonizing physical yearning and religious ecstasy, Qualley carries the film’s emotional center with profound interiority. Her nuanced, whisper-quiet performance opposite Melissa Leo’s tyrannical Mother Superior confirmed her dramatic range, proving she could anchor a hushed, contemplative character study without relying on kinetic stylization.

Richard Linklater’s intimate biographical drama confines its action to the smoky booths of Sardi’s restaurant on the opening night of Oklahoma! in 1943. Staged almost entirely in real time, the dialogue-driven chamber piece tracks legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart as his alcoholism, self-loathing, and artistic obsolescence collide over martinis while his former partner Richard Rodgers ascends to Broadway immortality. Slipping into the period milieu with relaxed sophistication, Qualley plays an observant Broadway confidante who acts as both foil and mirror to Hart’s spiraling unraveling. Her agile, melodic delivery fits Linklater’s naturalistic cadence like a glove, lending the somber, melancholic atmosphere a vital spark of grounded empathy and sharp wit.

Philippe Falardeau’s mid-nineties literary coming-of-age story captures the dust-mote charm and quiet snobbery of New York publishing. Revolving around a grand agency that stubbornly refuses to embrace computers, the film revels in rotary phones, typed fan correspondence, and the romantic illusion of escaping into poetry while struggling to pay rent in Brooklyn. Taking center stage as aspiring writer Joanna Rakoff, Qualley exudes wide-eyed earnestness and youthful optimism, providing a gentle foil to Sigourney Weaver’s chilly, patrician agency head. While the script occasionally veers into familiar biographical tropes, her charming vulnerability keeps the film anchored, proving her natural magnetism as a conventional leading lady.

Adapted from Peter Heller’s novel, this somber post-pandemic survival tale trades typical wasteland action for quiet, atmospheric grief set against the jagged beauty of the Colorado Rockies. The story charts an isolated pilot scraping together an existence with his dog and a volatile neighbor, hunting for faint signs of surviving humanity over crackling radio frequencies. Entering the narrative during its pivotal third act, Qualley injects urgent emotional warmth into an otherwise bleak, windswept terrain. Even under the constraints of a rugged survivalist framework, her instinctive ability to project resilience and wary vulnerability supplies the story with its long-delayed cathartic spark, elevating an otherwise steady post-apocalyptic narrative.

Saturated in acidic dark humor, this inheritance thriller tracks an outcast heir orchestrating ruthless, meticulously planned accidents to eliminate his aristocratic relatives. The narrative thrives on sharp class resentment and sleek, neo-noir framing, turning generational wealth into a bloody game of survival where every handshake hides a razor blade. Qualley cuts through the film’s cynical proceedings as a sharp-witted ally whose shifting loyalties keep the audience perpetually off-balance. She delivers venomous one-liners with delicious deadpan ease, although the film’s relentless cynicism and hurried pacing ultimately restrict her character from reaching the emotional depths found in her more auteur-driven work.

Built on the classic architecture of contemporary romantic melodrama, the film charts a sudden romantic epiphany derailed by unexpected medical and emotional complications. While the cinematography bathes its metropolitan backdrop in glossy golden-hour glows, the screenplay leans heavily on predictable genre rhythms and convenient emotional shortcuts that dull its intended tear-jerking impact. Despite the conventional material, Qualley commits wholeheartedly to Maya’s turbulent romantic arc, elevating sentimental beats through sheer emotional authenticity. Her tearful confrontations and radiant chemistry keep scenes watchable, yet the formulaic narrative framework gives her little room to stretch the idiosyncratic, daring impulses that define her finest screen triumphs.