The Best Female Action Movies, Ranked
List Rules
Vote up your favorite action movies that have female characters in the lead.
These are the best female action movies of all time, ranked from best to worst by user votes. The best female action films come in many forms. Many of the the films on this list feature tough women trained in combat while other good female action films find everyday women fighting for their lives, starring as movie leads. A few of the best feminist action films even generated sequels.
What Hollywood films will you find on this top female action movies list? Aliens has to be near the top. Sigourney Weaver stars as Officer Ripley who comes face to face with a deadly extraterrestrial while traveling in space in this 1979 movie directed by Ridley Scott. Terminator 2: Judgment Day – featuring Linda Hamilton as Sarah Conner – is another good female driven action film.
Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez released two of the all-time best female action films for their Grindhouse features Death Proof and Planet Terror. Other great feminist action movies include Hanna, Aeon Flux, and Wonder Woman.
Which female action film do you think deserves the top spot on this list? Give your favorites a vote up and please add any good movies we may have missed.
You might also like this list of the best female assassin movies.
list ordered by
- Alien is a science-fiction action horror franchise centered on a film series that depicts Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and her battles with an extraterrestrial lifeform, commonly ...more
- In this sequel set eleven years after "The Terminator," young John Connor (Edward Furlong), the key to civilization's victory over a future robot uprising, is the target of the shape-shifting T-1000 ...more
- Resident Evil is an action-horror film series based on the Japanese video game franchise by Capcom. German studio Constantin Film bought the rights to adapt the series in January 1998. In 2001, ...more
- In 19th century Qing Dynasty China, a warrior (Chow Yun-Fat) gives his sword, Green Destiny, to his lover (Michelle Yeoh) to deliver to safe keeping, but it is stolen, and the chase is on to find it. ...more
- The Kill Bill Saga consists of Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2 in which Beatrix Kiddo (Uma Thurman) seeks revenge against Bill (David Carradine), her former lover and the leader of a group known as the Deadly ...more
- Years after the collapse of civilization, the tyrannical Immortan Joe enslaves apocalypse survivors inside the desert fortress the Citadel. When the warrior Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) leads ...more
- A group of mercenaries, all centuries-old immortals with the ablity to heal themselves, discover someone is onto their secret, and they must fight to protect their freedom.
- In the 23rd century, a New York City cabbie, Korben Dallas (Bruce Willis), finds the fate of the world in his hands when Leeloo (Milla Jovovich) falls into his cab. As the embodiment of the fifth ...more
- Underworld is a series of action horror films directed by Len Wiseman, Patrick Tatopoulos, Måns Mårlind, and Björn Stein. The first film, Underworld, was released in 2003. It tells the story of ...more
- Before she was Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), she was Diana, princess of the Amazons, trained to be an unconquerable warrior. Raised on a sheltered island paradise, Diana meets an American pilot (Chris ...more
- Former scientist Galen Erso lives on a farm with his wife and young daughter, Jyn. His peaceful existence comes crashing down when the evil Orson Krennic takes him away from his beloved family. Many ...more
- Merida (Kelly Macdonald), the impetuous but courageous daughter of Scottish King Fergus (Billy Connolly) and Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson), is a skilled archer who wants to carve out her own path in ...more
- Sensual and savage, Lorraine Broughton is the most elite spy in MI6, an agent who's willing to use all of her lethal skills to stay alive during an impossible mission. With the Berlin Wall about to ...more
- When Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) became a CIA officer, she swore an oath to duty, honor and country. But, when a defector accuses her of being a Russian spy, Salt's oath is put to the test. Now a ...more
- Schoolteacher and single mother Samantha Caine (Geena Davis) lives an average suburban life -- until she begins having strange memories of unexplained violence and discovers that she has physical ...more
- Raised by her father (Eric Bana) in the Finnish wilderness, teenage Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) has trained all her life to be the perfect assassin. Her father sends her on a mission, and she stealthily ...more
- Raya and The Last Dragon is a 2021 American animated film directed by Paul Briggs and Dean Wellins. Raya (Cassie Steele) is a fearless and passionate warrior who searches for the last dragon in the ...more
- In this continuation of the television series "Firefly," a group of rebels travels the outskirts of space aboard their ship, Serenity, outside the reach of the Alliance, a sinister regime that ...more
- Following world war, London is a police state occupied by a fascist government, and a vigilante known only as V (Hugo Weaving) uses terrorist tactics to fight the oppressors of the world in which he ...more
- Ava is a 2020 American action thriller film directed by Tate Taylor. Ava Faulkner (Jessica Chastain) is a trained assassin who becomes targeted by her own organization after breaking protocol.
- Gunpowder Milkshake is a 2021 American action thriller film directed by Navot Papushado. Three generations of women fight back against those who could take everything from them.
- As a beautiful young woman of pure heart, Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) has an idyllic life in a forest kingdom. When an invading army threatens the land, Maleficent rises up to become its fiercest ...more
- For Buffy Summers (Kristy Swanson), nothing is the same after she meets Merrick Jamison-Smythe (Donald Sutherland). Merrick tells the teen that he's been sent to train her to fight vampires, and he ...more
- A year after a severe emotional trauma, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) goes to North Carolina to spend some time exploring caves with her friends; after descending underground, the women find strange cave ...more
- Anna is a 2019 English-language French crime thriller film written and directed by Luc Besson. Beneath Anna Poliatova's (Sasha Luss) striking beauty lies a secret that will unleash her indelible ...more
