Brad Pitt's most romantic movies: 'Legends of the Fall', 'Meet Joe Black' and more

Brad Pitt has built one of the most varied careers in Hollywood; however, it is his romantic roles that reveal something different about him, a vulnerability and an ache that his action and thriller work rarely asks for. At his best in a love story, he is more than just charming, giving the kind of screen presence that makes you believe completely in whatever version of love the film is asking you to accept. Here are seven of his most romantic films.

Set against the sweeping landscapes of early twentieth-century Montana, the film follows three brothers and the woman they all love, with Pitt playing Tristan, the wild and untameable middle brother whose inability to be held by anyone makes him the most magnetic and most heartbreaking figure in the story. Directed by Edward Zwick, the film also stars Anthony Hopkins and Aidan Quinn, and Pitt's raw, long-haired intensity in this role became one of the defining romantic images of the decade. It is the kind of film that stays with you long after it ends.

Death takes human form and falls in love in this slow, dreamlike romance directed by Martin Brest. Pitt plays the embodiment of Death, who borrows a young man's body and finds himself entirely undone by the experience of loving someone. Claire Forlani essays the role of the woman who reaches him, and their chemistry has a delicate, otherworldly quality that matches the film's unhurried pace. It is a film that rewards patience with one of Pitt's most quietly affecting performances.

A married couple discovers simultaneously that the other is a professional assassin and that they have each been hired to kill the other. Brad Pitt plays John Smith with a loose, easy charm that perfectly offsets Angelina Jolie's cooler, more controlled energy. Directed by Doug Liman, the friction between those two modes creates a chemistry that makes every scene crackle with something equal parts dangerous and irresistible. It is the rare action comedy that actually delivers on both.

Directed by David Fincher, the film follows a man born old who ages in reverse, with the romance between Pitt's Benjamin and Cate Blanchett's Daisy built on the tragedy of two people moving toward each other from opposite ends of time who can only meet in the middle for the briefest of windows. Pitt plays the full arc of Benjamin's life with a gentleness and precision that makes the film's final act genuinely devastating. It is one of the most bittersweet love stories in modern cinema.

As the legendary warrior Achilles in Wolfgang Petersen's epic, Brad Pitt brings a surprising tenderness to the scenes between Achilles and Briseis (played by Rose Byrne), finding the vulnerability beneath the myth and making their love story feel genuinely earned. The romance is not the film's primary concern, but Pitt makes it feel like it should be, and the warmth between the two leads stands apart from the film's larger spectacle. It is a side of his romantic range that the film's action reputation has somewhat obscured.

Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud, the film follows Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer, whose self-absorbed exterior is slowly dismantled by his years in Tibet. Brad Pitt plays the arc from coldness to openness with a restraint that makes every small moment of warmth feel hard-won. While the romance is not conventional, the love story between a man and the place that finally teaches him how to feel is deeply affecting. It is one of his most underrated and most genuinely moving films.

Based on Anne Rice's novel and directed by Neil Jordan, the film follows Louis, a grief-stricken plantation owner turned into a vampire against his will by the charismatic Lestat, played by Tom Cruise, and the centuries-long bond between them is one of cinema's most tortured romantic dynamics. Pitt plays Louis as a man who never stops mourning his humanity, and that persistent ache gives the film its emotional core. Antonio Banderas and Kirsten Dunst round out a cast that makes every scene feel charged with something unresolved.