Bruce Willis

BRUCE WILLIS

Only in America, folks, can a wise-cracking, smirk-flashing, follically-challenged, ex-bartender from New Jersey become a bonafide movie star -- with an estimated $3 billion, lifetime box-office haul, he has become the seventh highest-grossing actor in the history of film.  Whether doing action movies, heavy drama, or resorting to complete silliness in his regular appearances on The Late Show with David Letterman, Bruce Willis has earned his place in our hearts and on our movie screens.

Walter Bruce Willis was born on March 19th, 1955 in Ider-Obenstein, West Germany -- his mother, Marlene, was a German banker, his father, David Willis, an American soldier.  In 1957, after being discharged from the military, David Willis moved his brood back stateside, settling in Penns Grove, New Jersey -- he soon found work as a welder and factory worker.  Bruce’s parents divorced in 1972.

Though the teenage Bruce was popular among his classmates at Penns Grove High School, he did have a rather bad stutter -- an affliction which would inexplicably disappear whenever he was performing in drama class or on stage.  Upon graduating, Bruce sought a blue-collar job like his dad, and worked briefly at the DuPont Chambers Works factory in Deep Water, NJ -- he quit soon after when a coworker was killed on the job.  Deciding to follow his heart, Bruce enrolled at Montclair State University, where later a role in their stage production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof reignited his love of performing.  During this time he also played harmonica in a blues band called Loose Goose.  While still a junior, Bruce suddenly dropped out, moved to New York, and tried (initially in vain) to land some Broadway roles.

While bartending at the West Bank Café, where he earned the nickname Bruno, Bruce made his off-Broadway debut in Heaven and Earth.  He next starred in Sam Shepard’s play Fool For Love.

In 1980, the 25-year-old actor moved to Los Angeles, and soon found work as an extra in such films as The First Deadly Sin with Frank Sinatra, and Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict, with Paul Newman (... regarding that last, Bruce plays a courtroom observer in the final scene, sitting directly behind Paul Newman -- totally distracting now).

WILLIS AND SHEPHERD IN MOONLIGHTING

In 1984, Bruce (and 3,000 other hopefuls) auditioned for television producer Glenn Gordon Caron, to play the lead opposite Cybill Shepherd in Moonlighting, a detective comedy series for ABC.  Winning over Caron instantly, the producer had to repeatedly champion his young star to studio heads who just didn’t get his appeal.  Caron eventually won out, Moonlighting became on overnight sensation, and Bruce Willis was suddenly a household name.  The show ran for five seasons.

During this period, Bruce met and fell in love with actress Demi Moore, who became his wife in 1987.

In the late 1980s, after doing two lackluster films for director Blake Edwards, Blind Date and Sunset, Bruce auditioned for an action movie that had recently been turned down by Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Swarzenegger.  The movie was called Die Hard, and it would not only rocket Bruce to unimagined success, but would completely redefine the term “action film” -- indeed, for the next ten years, Hollywood nearly went bankrupt trying to copy this film.  To this day, Die Hard is widely considered to be the greatest action movie of all time.  After a couple of smaller films, In Country and Look Who’s Talking, Bruce made his first Die Hard sequel, Die Hard 2: Die Harder.  It was also a smash.  And then ...

... trouble struck with a series of box-office disappointments.  Look Who’s Talking Too, The Bonfire of the Vanities, Mortal Thoughts, Hudson Hawk (considered a debacle in its day, it now has a cult following), Billy Bathgate, The Last Boy Scout, Death Becomes Her, Striking Distance, and North.

BRUCE WILLIS IN DIE HARD (1988)

In 1994, Bruce’s career (along with that of John Travolta) was rescued by hip, young filmmaker Quentin Tarantino who cast both actors in his homage to 1970s exploitation fare, Pulp Fiction.  Bruce played pugilist Butch Coolidge, who risks his life to retrieve his father's prized gold watch by taking revenge on a pair of demented rednecks.  The film would win the Palme D’or at the Cannes Film Festival and put Bruce back on the A-list.  That same year, he would star opposite Paul Newman in Robert Benton’s excellent character study Nobody’s Fool.

After returning to play Detective John McClane for a third time in 1995’s Die Hard With a Vengeance, Bruce continued to play the action card in highly creative films like Twelve Monkeys and The Fifth Element; and not-so-creative, The Jackal and Mercury Rising.

Another career resurgence came in 1998, when Bruce starred in the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced, Michael Bay-directed Armageddon, about a “global-killer” asteroid that can only be destroyed by sending up Bruce’s motley band of oil-drillers.  Though the film garnered reviews across the spectrum (most either loved it or loathed it), the movie earned over half a billion dollars worldwide, and was the highest grossing film of 1998.

The very next year, second-time director M. Night Shyamalan cast Bruce in The Sixth Sense -- a quiet, low-budget drama about a troubled little boy who sees dead people, and the kindly child psychologist who helps him.  The film was the sleeper hit of the year (nay decade), and became at the time the tenth highest grossing film in history (worldwide gross: $$672,806,292).  Talk about The Little Movie That Could.

BRUCE WILLIS IN DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE

Bruce and Shyamalan reunited the following year for Unbreakable -- the thinking man’s comic book movie.  While not the gargantuan success of The Sixth Sense, the film did do nearly $250 million worldwide.  Shyamalan (in recent need of a hit himself) has lately been talking about a sequel.

Over the next few years, Bruce did respectable work in Bandits, Hart’s War, Tears of the Sun, Hostage, Sin City, Lucky Number Slevin, 16 Blocks, Over the Hedge, Grindhouse, and Perfect Stranger with Halle Berry.

In 2007, Bruce finally got around to making the film for which his die hard fans were clamoring: Live Free or Die Hard.  The fourth film in the franchise found irascible John McClane going up against a gang of cyber-terrorists.  The movie was a huge success, making over $383 million worldwide.  A fifth Die Hard is rumored to be forthcoming (can’t wait).

Over the years, Bruce has become a regular of sorts on The Late Show with David Letterman, where -- if nothing else -- he has proven beyond a doubt that he is absolutely fearless about humiliating himself in order to get a laugh.

In addition to co-founding Planet Hollywood with partners Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Swarzenegger, Bruce also owns (along with business partner Arnold Rifkin) his own motion picture production company, Cheyenne Enterprises.

BRUCE WILLIS ... SMIRKING WITH HAIR

While it is true that Bruce has supported Republican political candidates in the past, and has also received much ribbing from his (largely Democratic) Hollywood peers, he has in recent years made it clear that he supports neither party, and is rather apolitical, an independent.   And yet, he has been quite vocal about the way the war in Iraq has been portrayed in the media, saying, “I went to Iraq because what I saw when I was over there was soldiers — young kids for the most part — helping people in Iraq; helping getting the power turned back on, helping get hospitals open, helping get the water turned back on and you don't hear any of that on the news.  You hear, 'X number of people were killed today,' which I think does a huge disservice.  It's like spitting on these young men and women who are over there fighting to help this country.”

Bruce and Demi divorced in 2000, though Bruce remains extremely close to his ex-wife, their three daughters (Rumer, Scout, and Tallulah Belle), and Demi’s new husband, Ashton Kutcher.  Bruce attended Demi and Ashton’s wedding, and is often seen in public with them.  In recent years, Bruce has had relationships with models Maria Bravo Rosado, Emily Sandberg, Brooke Burns, Tamara Witmer, and Karen McDougal.  In March 2009, he married girlfriend Emma Heming.

Up next: The Surrogates, Three Stories About Joan, Pinkville, and The Last Full Measure.

BRUCE WILLIS

Bruce Willis Quotes:

“I'm much more proud of being a father than being an actor.”

“You can't undo the past ... but you can certainly not repeat it.”

“I'm staggered by the question of what it's like to be a multimillionaire.  I always have to remind myself that I am.”

Regarding staying in shape: “Mostly weight resistance training, almost an hour of cardio at least three times a week.  I have a gym in my house in Los Angeles and a gym trailer that I can take on the road with me when I'm on location.  At my house there's a very long steep driveway.  I do wind sprints that kick my 50-year-old ass.  It's part of my job.  I have come to associate working out as work.  Whenever I don't have to do it for films, I kind of slack off.”

“I am a sensitive guy.  People think they know the real me, but they don't.  And then they write things that make me sound like such a jerk.”

“Fifty is the new forty.  I always thought my best work would come in the years forty to sixty, if I was fortunate enough to hang around -- and it is hard to stick around.”

“Who I am as a father is far more important to me than the public perception.”

“I always thought [Hudson Hawk] was a little ahead of its time, a little too hip for the room.”

“I think the rules are going to have to change for me to ever run for public office.  My checkered past will always keep me out of politics.  If I ever did run I would run on the platform that I did all these bad things, but I no longer do them, and during the four years of being president or whatever office it might be, I would be good and serve my country.  I want to serve my country.”

BRUCE WILLIS -- LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD (2007)

“I'm a Republican only as far as I want a smaller government, I want less government intrusion, I want them to stop pissing on my money and your money, the tax dollars that we give 50 percent of, or 40 percent of, every year, and I want them to be fiscally responsible, and I want these goddamn lobbyists out of Washington.  Do that and I'll say I'm a Republican.  But other than that, I want the government to take care of people who need help, like the kids in foster care, the half a million kids who are in orphanages right now -- they call them foster homes, but they're orphanages.  I want them to take care of the elderly and give them free medicine, give them whatever they need.  There's tons, billions and billions of dollars that are just being wasted.  Okay?  I hate government.  I'm apolitical.  Write that down: I'm not a Republican.”

“Look at what happened to James Frey in the last two weeks.  That's a great book and so is the follow-up book.  And just because his publisher chose to say that these were memoirs, it took it out of being a work of fiction, a great work of fiction and very well-written to this guy having to go be sucker punched on The Oprah Winfrey Show by one of the most powerful women in television just to grind her own ax about it.  Hey Oprah, you had President Bill Clinton on your show and if this prick didn't lie about a couple of things I'm going to set myself on fire right now.  James Frey is a writer, okay?  He can write whatever he wants.  It's fiction, and it's just hard, it's just shameful how he was treated in some of these things.  It's just shameful and it's just not fair and not right.”

“If you take guns away from legal gun owners then the only people who would have guns would be the bad guys.  Even a pacifist would get violent if someone were trying to kill him or her.  You would fight for your life, whatever your beliefs.  You'd use a rock or tear one of these chairs out of the floor.  Hey, maybe I've been watching too many Bruce Willis movies!”

BRUCE WILLIS

“I'm always being accused of being a Hollywood Republican, but I'm not!  I have just as many Democratic ideas as Republican ones.  If they could build three fewer bombs every month and give the money to foster care, that would be great.”

“The idea of serving my country remained in my mind.  Over the past few years from varying sources -- Time Magazine, books, and television -- information began coming to my attention on Foster Care; its history and the current crisis of an antiquated system overburdened with 580,000 children who have no voice. Children need to be protected by interstate technology systems that can track placements, education, medical records and protect these children from predators traveling from state to state. I saw Foster Care as a way for me to serve my country in a system by which shining a little bit of light could benefit a great deal by helping kids who were literally wards of the government.”

“Hair loss is God's way of telling me I'm human.”

“I don't think my opinion means jack shit, because I'm an actor.  Why do actors think their opinions mean more because you act?  You just caught a break as an actor. There are hundreds, thousands, of actors who are just as good as I am, and probably better.  Have you heard anything useful come out of an actor's mouth lately?  Although I liked George Clooney’s documentary on Darfur.”

“No, I am not in favor of the war in Iraq, so let me stop you right there.  I am not pro-war but what I am is that, I like to support the young men and women who are over there participating in the war.”