Join today to claim your daily loot

15 Best Movies About Cheating & Infidelity

1-15

Love, betrayal, and everything after.

Nazarii Verbitskiy

TV Shows & Movies - October 10th 2026, 13:00 GMT+2

The Descendants — 15. The Descendants (2011)
George Clooney spends most of The Descendants settling a betrayal he can't even confront directly, since his wife is in a coma. Alexander Payne shot the film in Hawaii and refused to let the scenery turn into postcard comfort. The argument here isn't whether Elizabeth cheated, it's whether Matt's forgiveness means anything if she never wakes up to hear it. Fox Searchlight released it in 2011 and it won an Oscar for adapted screenplay, which didn't settle a thing. | © Fox Searchlight Pictures

The Last Kiss — 14. The Last Kiss (2006)
Zach Braff's character in The Last Kiss cheats with a college student for no reason he can actually name, which is exactly what makes people angry at the movie. Paramount released this 2006 remake of an Italian film, L'ultimo bacio, and kept the ending just as unresolved. Jenna's decision to take him back gets read by some as hope and by others as a woman settling for less than she deserves. Nobody involved in the film ever pretended Michael earned it. | © Paramount Pictures

The Other Woman — 13. The Other Woman (2014)
Picture the scene that sells The Other Woman in one shot: three women who all dated the same liar, standing in his kitchen deciding what to do with him. Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann, and Kate Upton play the discovery like a joke, then let it curdle into something closer to rage. Fox released it in 2014 and it made over $196 million worldwide, proof that revenge comedy sells even when critics called it thin. The debate isn't about the plot, it's about whether turning infidelity into slapstick lets the audience off too easy. | © 20th Century Fox

Cropped Notes on a Scandal — 12. Notes on a Scandal (2006)
Barbara Covett never cheats on anyone in Notes on a Scandal, yet she's the one who wrecks every life in it. Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett star in this 2006 Fox Searchlight release, built around Sheba's affair with a fifteen year old student. Richard Eyre frames the infidelity as almost secondary to the obsession watching it. People walk away from this one arguing about who the real predator was, and the movie never answers that for them. | © Fox Searchlight Pictures

Cropped The Graduate — 11. The Graduate (1967)
Nobody agrees on what Mrs. Robinson actually wants from Benjamin in The Graduate, and that confusion is the whole engine of the film. Anne Bancroft was only six years older than Dustin Hoffman, a gap Mike Nichols used to make the affair feel less like seduction and more like mutual drowning. Simon and Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson" turned her into shorthand for a certain kind of infidelity before most people had even seen the 1967 film. The ending, two people fleeing a wedding into an uncertain bus ride, still splits rooms on whether Benjamin did anything worth cheering for. | © Embassy Pictures

Cropped eyes wide shut 1999 — 10. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Stanley Kubrick died six days after delivering his final cut of Eyes Wide Shut to Warner Bros in 1999. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, married in real life at the time, play a couple undone by a confession that may or may not involve actual cheating. Alice never sleeps with anyone in the movie, she only describes a fantasy out loud. Whether that admission counts as betrayal is the entire two and a half hours. | © Warner Bros

Cropped The English Patient — 9. The English Patient (1996)
A burned man in the Italian countryside tells his story in fragments, and Ralph Fiennes plays him as someone who has already lost everything that mattered. The English Patient won nine Oscars in 1997, including Best Picture, for a romance built entirely around a married woman's affair during wartime. Katharine dies because of choices Almásy makes chasing her. Calling it one of the great love stories means deciding that her husband's fate barely counts. | © Miramax

Cropped Indecent Proposal — 8. Indecent Proposal (1993)
Robert Redford offers one million dollars for one night with another man's wife in Indecent Proposal, and the couple says yes. Adrian Lyne built the whole 1993 movie around that transaction, not around whether it happens. Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson's marriage survives the money but not the arithmetic it revealed about what they'd trade. Nobody in the theater agreed on whether the real betrayal was her night away or his decision to let her go. | © Paramount Pictures

Match Point — 7. Match Point (2005)
Woody Allen opens Match Point with a line about luck mattering more than being good at something, then spends the rest of the film proving it. Chris Wilton cheats on his wife, gets his mistress pregnant, and solves the problem with a shotgun instead of a confession. The film made about 85 million dollars worldwide off a plot that rewards him for it. Scarlett Johansson's Nola dies for a decision that was never really hers to make. | © DreamWorks Pictures

Cropped Revolutionary Road — 6. Revolutionary Road (2008)
April and Frank Wheeler tell themselves Paris will fix everything, right up until an affair and an unplanned pregnancy collapse that plan in one afternoon. Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio reunited on screen here in 2008, eleven years after Titanic, playing people who can't stand each other or themselves. Richard Yates published the novel in 1961 and called suburban conformity the real villain. The movie asks whether Frank's cheating or April's desperation to leave did more damage, and never picks a side. | © Paramount Vantage

Little Children — 5. Little Children (2006)
Kate Winslet plays Sarah, a bored suburban mother who starts an affair with another unhappy parent at the playground. Todd Field builds the film around a reading group dissecting Madame Bovary, in case anyone missed the parallel. The comparison annoys some people and feels exactly right to others. Nobody leaves the film agreeing on whether Sarah deserved her ending or just got unlucky. | © New Line Cinema

Fatal Attraction — 4. Fatal Attraction (1987)
Glenn Close's Alex Forrest boils a rabbit alive in a movie that made "bunny boiler" a phrase people still use. Adrian Lyne shot a different ending where Alex kills herself, and test audiences hated it so much the studio reshot the finale entirely. That single decision turned a film about a man's choices into one about punishing the woman who exposed them. Paramount released both versions eventually, and the argument over which one is honest never got resolved. | © Paramount Pictures

The Bridges of Madison County 1995 — 3. The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
Robert Kincaid spends four days with Francesca Johnson in 1965 and then drives away for good. Clint Eastwood directs the affair like something sacred, all rain and diner tables and unbearable restraint. Francesca stays married, raises her kids, and keeps the memory instead of the man. Calling that choice noble requires ignoring everyone who thinks she just wasted her one shot at happiness. | © Warner Bros.

Closer — 2. Closer (2004)
Dani, played by Natalie Portman, asks Larry a single question near the end of Closer that most people can't answer honestly for themselves. Mike Nichols adapted Patrick Marber's play and kept the dialogue just as cruel, with four people lying to each other and calling it love. Julia Roberts and Jude Law's characters cheat with barely any guilt attached to it. The film never tells you who to root for, which is exactly why people still fight about it. | © Columbia Pictures

Unfaithful msn — 1. Unfaithful (2002)
Richard Gere hires a private investigator to follow his own wife in Unfaithful, and what he learns wrecks him slowly rather than all at once. Diane Lane's Connie doesn't seem to be looking for an affair, she just falls into one with a stranger in SoHo. Adrian Lyne refuses to make her simply guilty or simply trapped. The final shot leaves Connie and her husband sitting in a car, and it never says what happens after. | © 20th Century Fox

1-15

Few subjects cut as deep on screen as infidelity, and the best films about it find the full messy complexity of what it does to people. Here are 15 of the best movies about cheating and infidelity.

Facebook X Reddit WhatsApp Copy URL

Few subjects cut as deep on screen as infidelity, and the best films about it find the full messy complexity of what it does to people. Here are 15 of the best movies about cheating and infidelity.