The best Joey King movies and TV shows prove that the young actress has a lot more going for her than just the string of releases she enjoyed after her breakout in The Kissing Booth. King got her start as a child actor, with her first roles coming with she was only seven. As a youngster, she appeared in some major blockbusters, including Battle: Los Angeles, Crazy, Stupid, Love, The Dark Knight Rises, and The Conjuring. That experience prepared her for what has become a leading lady role as she reaches her 20s.

That all started in The Kissing Booth, which saw King star in all three movies in the franchise from 2018 to 2021. The success of those films on Netflix opened the door for King to earn more roles both in movies and on streaming services. She took on the lead role of Gypsy-Rose Blanchard in The Act, a fun ing role in the Brad Pitt action movie Bullet Train, and has stretched her acting muscles in the World War II Holocaust drama series We Were the Lucky Ones.

10 The In Between (2022)

Tessa

In 2022, Joey King and Kyle Allen teamed up for the paranormal romance film The In Between. This was one of King’s streaming movies, released on Paramount+ and overseas on Netflix that tells the story of a young man and young woman whose love ends in tragedy. Directed by Arie Posin (The Chumscrubber), the paranormal aspects focus on the “In Between,” a place where a recently deceased soul waits for one final before being able to move on to the other side.

King slid in nicely to the romantic drama, a genre she has become most known for, and received critical praise for her performance. The film received a slightly above average 64% on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics praising its moving young adult romance, although others say it is a little too familiar to stand out from the crowd.

9 The Lie (2018)

Kayla Logan

Blumhouse created eight horror and thriller movies for Prime Video as a part of the Welcome to Blumhouse series in 2020 and 2021. The first of these films was the Joey King thriller The Lie (which originally premiered in 2018). The psychological horror stars King as Kayla, a teenage girl whose dad stops to pick up her friend Britney as he is driving Kayla to a ballet retreat. However, when they pull over to go to the bathroom in the woods, something happens, and Kayla its to her dad that she pushed Britney into the frozen lake below.

The film's title reveals the main plot point here, as Kayla uses this tragedy to attempt to bring her divorced parents back together. However, when the film’s twists and turns reveal the truth, her lies end up destroying everyone’s lives. The Lie received mixed to low reviews, but critics praised Joey King’s tragic performance as one of the film’s positive traits.

8 Despicable Me 4 (2024)

Poppy Prescott

The Despicable Me franchise returned in 2024 with the fourth entry in Gru’s storyline, seeing Gru and Lucy adding a new baby to their family. However, when a villain mastermind escapes from prison and vows revenge on Gru and his family, they have to go into hiding for their own safety. It is here that Gru meets a young girl next door who learns his real identity and blackmails him to help her pull off a master robbery at Gru’s old school.

It is Joey King who plays the young Poppy Prescott, the aspiring supervillain. It is hard to recognize King’s voice in the role, as she takes on a very over-the-top dialect to portray Poppy, and that speaks volumes for the young actress’s skills as a voice-over performer. Reviews were mostly average, but this is a franchise that doesn’t require good reviews for success, and it ended up as one of the top-grossing movies of 2024.

7 Bullet Train (2022)

Malen’kly Prints / The Prince

Brad Pitt was the main star in the action-comedy Bullet Train, by John Wick and Deadpool 2 director David Leitch. However, it was the ensemble cast built around him that made the movie such a fun thrill ride from the start to the end. Names like Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Zazie Beetz, and Logan Lerman were all onboard as assassins gunning for Putt’s Ladybug. However, Joey King was a standout as the young assassin known as The Prince.

While only part of the larger, impressive cast, King stole almost every scene that she appeared in...

The Prince heads onto the train disguised as a schoolgirl, but she is there because she wants vengeance on her estranged father, The White Death (Michael Shannon). The movie was a box office success and received mostly average reviews from critics. While only part of the larger, impressive cast, King stole almost every scene that she appeared in and helped the over-the-top almost cartoony action sequences deliver a very fun movie.

6 The Act (2019)

Gypsy-Rose Blanchard

Gypsy-Rose Blanchard was a young girl whose mother had her diagnosed with several afflictions that she did not have and then fed her the drugs that kept her trapped in a wheelchair. That all concluded when the girl met a man online, and they ended up killing her mother to aid in her escape. Joey King stars as Gypsy in the Hulu true crime drama series The Act, an eight-part series that tells the story of Gypsy’s abused childhood and her eventual decision to kill her mother.

The Act also earned two Primetime Emmy nominations for the action, with King nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress and Arquette winning for Outstanding ing Actress.

Patricia Arquette co-stars as Dee Dee, Gypsie’s abusive mother, while AnnaSophia Robb and Chloë Sevigny star as characters invented for the series to help tell the story. Despite the changes made to Gypsy’s story, critics still praised the adaptation of her tragic life, awarding it an 88% positive Rotten Tomatoes score. The Act also earned two Primetime Emmy nominations for the action, with King nominated for Outstanding Lead Actress and Arquette winning for Outstanding ing Actress.

5 Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)

Molly Weaver

One of Joey King’s early roles as a child actor came in the 2011 romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid, Love. This was a Steve Carell vehicle, where he stars as Cal Weaver, a middle-aged man whose wife Emily (Julianne Moore) asks for a divorce after she its to cheating on him. Cal goes into a depression and starts hanging out at an upscale bar where he befriends a young man who also frequents the bar named Jacob (Ryan Gosling).

Jacob helps Cal come out of his shell, but when Jacob ends up falling for Cal’s daughter Hannah (Emma Stone) it causes a huge rift. The movie was critically praised for its talented cast and their ability to help the film rise above the script. Emma Stone took home awards from the People’s Choice Awards and Teen Choice Awards. Joey King stars as Molly, one of Cal’s younger children, and while it was a small role, it was a sign of things to come.

4 The Kissing Booth (2018)

Elle Evans

Joey King enjoyed her breakout role with the 2018 Netflix romantic comedy The Kissing Booth. In this film, King plays Elle, a late-blooming teenager who begins a new relationship with high school senior and bad boy Noah (Jacob Elordi). However, this relationship causes problems with her lifelong friend Lee (Joel Courtney), who happens to be Noah’s younger brother. Their relationship starts at a school kissing booth, which explains the movie’s title.

Critics hated the movie, awarding it a very low 15% Rotten Tomatoes score. However, The Kissing Booth ended up being critic-proof, as audiences loved it and the Netflix viewing numbers were massive, convincing the streaming giant to create two more movies with King returning in the lead, following her continued struggles to figure out who she wants to be with at the end. Despite her continued Hollywood success, this remains what King remains best known for.

3 Fargo (2014-2015)

Greta Grimly

In 2014, FX brought the beloved Coen Brothers movie Fargo to the small screen in what ended up as the start of a new anthology series that would go on to win several awards and critical acclaim. The first season of the series saw Billy Bob Thornton playing a hitman whose car crashes while ing through the small town of Bemidji, Minnesota. His appearance turns the entire community upside down.

A 15-year-old Joey King stars as Greta Grimly, the daughter of Colin Hanks’ police officer Gus Grimley. She has a small, but recurring role in the first season of Fargo, as she was wise beyond her years, both in scenes with other kids at school and with her dad, especially when he struggled to make the right decisions. The first season won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series and the Emmy for Outstanding Casting.

2 The Conjuring (2013)

Christine Perron

Joey King stars in what was one of the most important horror movies of this century. In 2013, James Wan directed the horror movie The Conjuring, which brought real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren to the big screen. The film was such a big success that it spawned what became known as The Conjuring Universe, which included sequels and spinoffs like Annabelle and The Nun.

It was a small role, but the teenage King delivered a great performance and showed that she deserved the increased attention she was receiving from Hollywood.

The first movie follows Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) as they investigate a haunted farmhouse in Rhode Island to attempt to save the family who lives there, which includes a man, his wife, and their five daughters. A 14-year-old Joey King plays one of the daughters, Christine. It was a small role, but the teenage King delivered a great performance and showed that she deserved the increased attention she was receiving from Hollywood.

1 We Were The Lucky Ones (2024)

Halina Kurc

In 2024, Joey King took on a role unlike anything she had ever done before. While she played a real person in The Act, it was still presented more like a thriller series. In this Hulu miniseries, she takes on a role in a historical drama set during World War II and the Holocaust. Based on the book by Georgia Hunter, which outlined the struggle of her own family to survive the Holocaust, We Were the Lucky Ones follows one family trying to survive this tragic time in history.

Joey King stars as Halina Kurc, the youngest child in the family who also works as a lab assistant. Logan Lerman plays her brother, Addy, who lives in Paris and wants to become a composer. Critics praised the miniseries, awarding it a 95% fresh Rotten Tomatoes score, with reviews calling it both “harrowing” and “life-affirming.” Joey King was nominated for an Astra TV Award, while Logan Lerman received a nomination from the Critics’ Choice Awards.