Bruce Willis hit it big in 1988 as a scrappy action hero John McClane in the terrorists-in-the-skyscraper film Die Hard. Willis grew up in New Jersey and began acting in college. Partnered with Cybill Shepherd in the TV detective romance Moonlighting (1985-89), Willis became a TV star. During the show's run he made the leap to the big screen, starring in Blind Date with Kim Basinger before his turn as disillusioned cop John McClane in Die Hard. The film was a smashing success and spawned three sequels, Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990), Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995, with Samuel L. Jackson), and Live Free or Die Hard (2007). Willis followed up his Die Hard success with action films good and bad (including the notorious 1991 flop Hudson Hawk) and his 12-year marriage to Demi Moore was constant fodder for the gossip sheets. He has made a habit of taking smaller character parts as well as leading roles, including a much-appreciated appearance in Pulp Fiction (1994, with Ving Rhames). Willis has a reputation for keeping busy, and his other films include: 12 Monkeys (1995, co-starring Brad Pitt); two M. Night Shyamalan movies, The Sixth Sense (1999) and Unbreakable (2000); Bandits (2001, with Billy Bob Thornton); Hart's War (2002, with Colin Farrell; Hostage (2005); Frank Miller's Sin City (2005, with Jessica Alba); 16 Blocks (2006, with Mos Def); and Over the Hedge (2006, also with the voice of Steve Carell).
Willis and Moore were married from 1987-2000. They had three daughters together: Rumer Glenn (b. 1988), Scout LaRue (b. 1991), and Tallulah Belle (b. 1994). Scout is reportedly named for the youthful heroine of the book To Kill a Mockingbird... Willis recorded two blues albums in the 1980s, when he went by the musical nickname "Bruno": The Return of Bruno (1987) and If It Don't Kill You, It Just Makes You Stronger (1989). He sings at times with his backup band, The Accelerators.
Best known as the action hero behind cinema's Die Hard series, Bruce Willis (b. March 19, 1955; Penns Grove, NJ) became a twice-over recording artist during the late '80s. His debut album, The Return of Bruno, became a surprise seller after the single "Respect Yourself" hit the Top Five in early 1987. Willis had two other modest hits, and recorded another LP two years later, but has remained outside music for the most part -- performing only occasionally to inaugurate several Planet Hollywood restaurants. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide
Representative Songs:
"Respect Yourself," "Under the Boardwalk," "Jackpot (Bruno's Bop)"
Representative Albums:
The Return of Bruno, Millennium Series, Master Series
Born: Mar 19, 1955 in Idar-Oberstein, West Germany
Occupation: Actor, Writer
Active: '80s-2000s
Major Genres: Comedy, Action
Career Highlights: The Sixth Sense, Moonlighting, Mortal Thoughts
First Major Screen Credit: Moonlighting (1985)
Biography
Bruce Willis is one of Hollywood's most beloved and iconic leading men. The actor sports a cocky, ever-present smirk, projects a constant stream of wise-assed quips, and has virtually mastered the slow burn, but unlike some of his contemporaries with that approach, Willis never hesitates to let the audience know that it's partially done in goofy jest, or to reveal, at closer glance, a level of soft-hearted affability buried beneath it all. This juxtaposition initially served Willis well in big- and small-screen comedies, but in the late '80s, he switched gears by headlining John McTiernan's Die Hard (1988). In so doing, Willis carried his persona into barrel-chested action roles with equal force, and instantly established himself as one of the most bankable and versatile stars in contemporary filmdom.
Born Walter Willison -- an Army brat to parents stationed in Idar-Oberstein, West Germany -- on March 19, 1955, Willis grew up in New Jersey from the age of two. As a youngster, he developed a stutter that posed the threat of social alienation, but he discovered an odd quirk: while performing in front of large numbers of people, the handicap inexplicably vanished. This led Willis into a certified niche as a comedian and budding actor. After high-school graduation, 18-year-old Willis decided to land a blue-collar job in the vein of his father, and accepted a position at the DuPont Chambers Works factory in Deep Water, NJ, but withdrew, shaken, after a co-worker was killed on the job. He performed regularly on the harmonica in a blues ensemble called the Loose Goose and worked temporarily as a security guard before enrolling in the drama program at Montclair State University in New Jersey. A collegiate role in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof brought Willis back in touch with his love of acting, and he instantly decided to devote his life to the profession. During his junior year, he impetuously packed up, dropped out of college, and headed off to New York, trying unsuccessfully to land parts in innumerable Broadway productions. Not long after (in 1977), the 22-year-old aspiring actor succeeded and began a temporary stage career.
Two years later, in 1980, Willis transitioned to film with a bit role in Brian G. Hutton's The First Deadly Sin, starring Frank Sinatra, and two years after that, a bit role in Sidney Lumet's The Verdict, starring Paul Newman. Willis didn't land broad exposure and enter the public eye, however, until 1984, when he auditioned for TV series creator Glenn Gordon Caron -- among 3,000 hopefuls -- to play the lead in Moonlighting, an ABC detective comedy series. Sensing Willis' innate appeal, Caron instantly cast him opposite the luminous Cybill Shepherd. It was a brilliant move.
The series, which debuted on March 3, 1985, sported a charming premise with a complex backstory. Shepherd played Maddie Hayes, a top fashion model. Mercilessly cheated out of her fortune by a conniving manager, Maddie discovered at the last minute that her assets included a hole-in-the-wall Los Angeles private-investigation firm, The Blue Moon Detective Agency. Willis portrayed David Addison, its impossibly hip yet slovenly principal employee. Though Maddie initially intended to fire David and liquidate the business, he connived his way into hanging onto the position, and the two paired up on a series of detective cases, with David coarsely and aggressively attempting to wheedle his way into Maddie's heart over the course of the series. (His bag-of-tricks included wolf whistles and '60s bubblegum tunes.) Moonlighting swept audiences off of their feet, but the series ran into a host of ugly problems, thanks in no small part to ongoing creative differences between Caron, Shepherd, and Willis. This delayed production constantly and resulted in frequent repeat episodes, but the series weighed heavily on stylistic invention and innovation and held a loyal following. It ultimately lasted four years and wrapped on May 14, 1989. During the first year or two of the series, Willis and Shepherd enjoyed a brief offscreen romantic involvement as well, but Willis soon met and fell in love with actress Demi Moore, who became his wife in 1987.
In the interim, Willis segued into features at the behest of Blake Edwards, who cast him as geeky Walter Davis -- a businessman who takes Kim Basinger out on the most destructive date in movie history -- in the madcap 1987 comedy Blind Date. The picture received mixed reviews but did respectable box office for TriStar. That same year, Motown Records -- perhaps made aware of Willis' experiences as a musician -- invited the star to record an LP of blue-eyed soul tracks. The Return of Bruno emerged and became a moderate hit among baby boomers, although as the years passed it became more a punchline than anything.
In 1988, Willis broke box-office records when he starred in John McTiernan's Die Hard for producer Joel Silver. This bloody, bone-crunching action saga cast Willis as John McClane, a working-class cop who confronts an entire skyscraper full of terrorists when the brutes take captive McClane's estranged wife and a host of other innocents one fateful Christmas Eve. McTiernan and Silver employed an unusual strategy: they used Willis' wiseacre television persona to constantly undercut the film's somber underpinnings, without ever once damaging the suspenseful core of the material. This, coupled with a smart script and wall-to-wall sequences of spectacular action, propelled Die Hard to number one at the box office during the summer of 1988. The film ultimately broke many box-office records and led to several lucrative sequels.
Thereafter, Willis occasionally attempted to expand his range beyond traditional action and comedy, but the results proved somewhat lackluster, from disappointing (the 1989 Norman Jewison drama In Country, with Willis as a Vietnam vet) to downright ludicrous (Brian De Palma's 1990 film The Bonfire of the Vanities, with Willis as a British reporter). He fared better with more traditional genre work, such as Amy Heckerling's 1989 hit comedy Look Who's Talking, in which he voiced Mikey, a baby whose thoughts are comically projected aloud for the audience to hear. (Like Heckerling, Willis made the mistake of signing on for its incorrigible sequel, 1990's Look Who's Talking, Too, though, mercifully, not for the third installment.) He also signed on for the second installment of the Die Hard series in 1990.
In 1991, Willis scraped rock bottom -- and then some -- when he launched a "vanity project," the multi-million-dollar heist comedy Hudson Hawk. This off-the-wall, action-laden farce, about a mad-as-a-March-hare cat burglar, found Willis posing a triple threat (lead actor, first time co-screenwriter, and co-author of the title song). The mega-budgeted Hawk became one of the most notorious stinkers of all time, was despised by critics, and cost its studio millions of dollars.
Willis' turn as a "master of disguises" in Rob Reiner's equally disastrous 1994 children's comedy North didn't help much, either, but (like John Travolta, who had slipped further and had fallen harder by 1994) Willis bounced back with a key role in Quentin Tarantino's 1994 cause célèbre, Pulp Fiction. Willis, Travolta, and many of the others in the cast reputedly agreed to work on the project for scale -- quite a jaw-dropper given Willis' ability to command six figures for a typical Hollywood role. As the pugilist Butch, who risks his life to retrieve his father's prized watch but takes violent revenge on spate of demented, S&M-happy rednecks, Willis won favor with audiences around the world and landed back on top of his game. He doubled this up with an affable supporting role as Carl Roebuck in Robert Benton's beautifully realized character study Nobody's Fool, starring Paul Newman, that same year.
A torrent of equally successful (albeit more traditional) genre roles followed for Willis throughout the '90s. He swung into action as John McClane for a third time, in 1995's blockbuster Die Hard: With a Vengeance, provided the voice of Muddy Grimes for Mike Judge's Beavis & Butthead Do America (1996), and teamed up with mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer for the ripping sci-fi action yarn Armageddon (1998), while contributing witty guest-starring appearances to such prime-time comedy series as Ally McBeal, Mad About You, and Friends.
Willis landed one of his biggest hits, however, when he signed on to work with writer/director M. Night Shyamalan in the supernatural thriller The Sixth Sense. In that film, Willis played Dr. Malcolm Crowe, a child psychologist assigned to treat a young boy (Haley Joel Osment) plagued by visions of ghosts. The picture packs a wallop in its final minutes, with a now-infamous surprise that even purportedly caught Hollywood insiders off guard when it hit U.S. cinemas in the summer of 1999. Around the same time, tabloids began to swarm with gossip of a breakup between Willis and Demi Moore, who indeed filed for divorce and finalized it in the fall of 2000.
Willis and M. Night Shyamalan teamed up again in 2000 for Unbreakable, an oddball fantasy about a man (Willis) who suddenly discovers that he has been imbued with superhero powers and meets his polar opposite, a psychotic, fragile-bodied black man (Samuel L. Jackson). This byzantine fantasy opus divided critics but drew hefty grosses when it premiered on November 22, 2000. That same year, Willis delighted audiences with a neat comic turn as hitman Jimmy the Tulip in The Whole Nine Yards. (He followed it up four years later with a cloying -- and cleverly named -- sequel, The Whole Ten Yards.)
A handful of somewhat lackluster, low-profile films followed from 2001-2002, including Bandits, Hart's War, and True West, a filmed version of the Sam Shepard play, which Willis also executive produced. In 2005, he played Hartigan in Robert Rodriguez's graphic-novel adaptation Sin City, and retread his Die Hard role with the poorly received thriller Hostage, as a former hostage negotiator-turned-cop who revisits old haunts when he must deliver a small-town family from a cadre of psychotic criminals holding them hostage.
In 2006, Willis threw himself into his work with full abandon; he appeared in no less than seven major productions. These included Richard Donner's 16 Blocks (as an alcoholic cop required to transport a criminal on a hazardous journey to the courthouse), Richard Linklater's Fast Food Nation (in a funny cameo, as the adversary of fast-food rep Greg Kinnear), Paul McGuigan's thriller Lucky Number Slevin (as diabolical hitman Mr. Goodkat), and Nick Cassavetes' based-on-actual-events crime drama Alpha Dog, as the father of adolescent gangster-kidnapper-drug pusher Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch). The next year, the actor played a murder suspect in James Foley's psychological thriller Perfect Stranger, opposite Halle Berry, and reprised his role as everyman superhero John McClane in a fourth installment of the Die Hard series, Live Free or Die Hard, directed by Len Wiseman.
Bruce Willis is, along with fellow actors Tom Selleck, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dennis Hopper, and John Milius, one of the few outspoken conservatives in Hollywood, and reputedly a staunch supporter of the Republican party. He has three children by Moore: Rumer, Scout, and Tallulah Belle. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
Happy 50th birthday to actor Bruce Willis! The versatile star of dozens of films, including The Sixth Sense, The Whole Nine Yards, and the Die Hard movies, is working on Die Hard 4.0, due to be released next year. He also has recorded two blues albums.
"My wife heard me say I love you a thousand times, but she never once heard me say sorry"
"Our marriage is like anybody's marriage, It goes through ups and downs. It's a little garden that you have to tend all the time. When we're home, it's not like we walk around all dolled up going, We are celebrities! We are famous! I change diapers. I clean up dog doo."
Walter Bruce Willis (born March 19, 1955) is an
Americanactor and singer.
He came to fame in the late 1980s and has since retained a career as both a Hollywood leading man and a supporting actor, in particular for his role as
John McClane in the Die Hard series. Willis was
married to actress Demi Moore and they had three daughters before their divorce in 2000 after
thirteen years of marriage. He has received multiple awards and honors throughout his career and has publicly shown his support
for the United States armed forces. In various interviews, Willis has
revealed his political opinions and interest in several conspiracy theories.
Motion pictures that feature him as a leading actor or supporting co-star, have grossed a total of $2.42[1] to $2.88 billion[2] at the North Americanbox office, placing him as the sixth (as strictly lead) or the ninth highest-grossing movie star (counting supporting roles) of all time.
Early life
Willis was born in Idar-Oberstein, Germany to David
Willis, an American soldier, and a Kassel-born German
mother, Marlene, who worked in a bank.[3] Willis was the oldest of four children (his siblings are Florence,
David, and Robert). After being discharged from the military in 1957, Willis's father took his family back to Penns Grove, New Jersey, where he worked as a welder and factory
worker.[4] His parents separated in 1971 while
Willis was in his early teens.[3] He was always
an outgoing youngster, although he grew up with a stutter.[5] Finding it easy to express himself on stage and losing his stutter in the process, Willis began performing on stage and his high school activities were marked by such things as the drama club and school council president.[6]
After graduating Penns Grove High School, Willis farmed sheep in a mining village in Alabama,
transporting work crews at the DuPont Chambers Works factory in Deepwater, New Jersey. He decided to quit after a colleague was killed on the job, and thereafter
became a regular at several bars. Willis also discovered an innate knack for playing harmonica
and joined an R&Bband called Loose
Goose.[6] After a stint as a
private investigator (a role he plays in his 1991 film, The Last Boy Scout), Willis returned to his
original passion of acting. He enrolled in the drama program at Montclair State
University, where he was cast in the class production of Cat on a Hot Tin
Roof with Jack Prince as Big Daddy, William Applegate
as the doctor, and Kevin J. Lynch as the Rev. Tooker. Willis left school during his junior year
and moved to New York City.[3]
Willis returned to the bar scene, only this time for a part-time job and as a way to meet New York celebrities. He is rumored to have been 'discovered' while working at the Museum Cafe on New York's Upper West
Side. After countless auditions, Willis made his theater debut in the
off-Broadway production of Heaven and Earth. He gained more experience and exposure
in Fool for Love, a stint on television's Miami Vice, and in a Levi'scommercial.[7]
Career
Willis left New York City and headed to California to audition for several
television shows.[3] He auditioned for the
TV seriesMoonlighting
(1985–89), while competing against 3,000 other actors for the position and was selected to play David Addison Jr.[7] The starring role helped to establish him as a
comedic actor, with the show lasting five seasons. During the height of the show's success,
beverage maker Seagram hired Willis as the pitchman for their Golden Wine Cooler products. The
memorable ad campaign paid the rising star between five and seven million dollars over two years. In spite of that, Willis
decided not renew his contract with the company when he decided to stop drinking in 1988.[8] One of his first major film roles was in the 1987 Blake Edwards film "Blind Date" alongside
Kim Bassinger and John Laroquette.
However, it was his then-unexpected turn in the film Die Hard that catapulted him to
fame. He performed most of his own stunts in the film,[9] and the film grossed $138,708,852 worldwide.[10] Due to its box office success, the film would eventually tender three more
sequels, with the most current film, Live Free or Die Hard, released in
June 2007. He also provided his voice for a talking baby in Look Who's Talking and its sequel.
In the late-1980s, Willis enjoyed moderate success as a recording artist, recording an album
of pop-blues entitled The Return of Bruno, which included the hit
single "Respect Yourself",[11] promoted by
a Spinal Tap-like rockumentaryparody featuring scenes of him performing at famous events including Woodstock. Follow-up recordings were not as successful, though Willis has returned to the recording
studio several times.
In 1999, Willis then went on to the starring role in M. Night Shyamalan's film, The Sixth Sense. The film
was both a commercial and critical success and helped to increase interest in his acting career. He once had to appear in the hit
sitcomFriends without pay,
because he lost a bet to Matthew Perry, his co-star
in The Whole Nine Yards and its sequel The Whole Ten Yards. He won a 2000 Emmy for Outstanding
Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his work on Friends (in which he played the father of Ross Geller's much-younger girlfriend). He was also nominated for a 2001 American Comedy Award (in the
Funniest Male Guest Appearance in a TV Series category) for his work on Friends. Willis was originally cast as Terry
Benedict in Ocean's Eleven (2001) but dropped out to work on recording an album. In Ocean's
Twelve (2003), he makes a cameo
appearance as himself. He recently appeared in the Planet Terror half of the
double feature Grindhouse as the villain, a
mutant soldier. This marks Willis' second collaboration with directorRobert Rodriguez, following Sin City.
Willis has appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman
several times throughout his career. He filled in for an ill David Letterman on his show
February 26, 2003, when he was supposed to be a guest.[15] He interviewedDan Rather in what he would later call "the most serious
conversation of my entire life". On many of his appearances on the show, Willis stages elaborate jokes, such as wearing a day-glo
orange suit in honor of the Central Park gates, having one side of his face made up with
simulated buckshot wounds after the Harry
Whittington shooting, or trying to break a record (parody of David Blaine) of
staying underwater for only 20 seconds. On April 12, 2007, he
appeared again, this time wearing a Sanjaya Malakar wig.[16] His most recent appearance was on June
25, 2007 when he appeared wearing a mini-turbine strapped to his head to accompany a joke
about his own fictional documentary entitled An Unappealing Hunch (a wordplay of An Inconvenient Truth).[17]
Willis also appeared on JapaneseSubaru Legacy
television commercials,[18] optimizing
the car for sale, with the backing music of Jade from Sweetbox, "Addicted" and "Hate Without Frontiers". Tying in with this, Subaru did a limited run of Legacys,
badged "Subaru Legacy Touring Bruce", in honor of Willis.
With the third sequel to Die Hard, Live Free or Die Hard
(Die Hard 4.0 outside North America) having been released in June 2007, Willis'
future projects will include three other films that will debut between 2007 and 2009. The Last Full Measure is a drama
film based on a true story about a Vietnam War veteran, and 2008's The Sophomore is a comedy where he will be a Catholic school principal and his real-life eldest daughter,
Rumer, will star as a student investigating missing SAT scores.[19] The 2009 film will be the drama Morgan's
Summit, where he will depict a late night radio host who promotes kindness, but changes his demeanor after a brutal
crime causes him to seek revenge.
At the premiere for the film Stakeout, Willis met
actress Demi Moore who was dating actor Emilio
Estevez at the time. Willis married Moore on November 21, 1987 and had three daughters (Rumer Glenn Willis (born 1988), Scout LaRue
Willis (1991) and Tallulah Belle Willis (1994)) before the couple divorced on October 18, 2000. The couple gave no public reason for their breakup. Willis
reacting on his divorce stated "I felt I had failed as a father and a husband by not being able to make it work" and credited
actor Will Smith for helping him get through the divorce.[3] Willis and Moore currently share custody of the three daughters they had during their thirteen-year union.[3] Since their breakup, rumors persisted that the couple planned to re-marry,
but Moore has since married the younger actor Ashton Kutcher. Willis has maintained a
close relationship with both Moore and Kutcher. Since his divorce he has dated models Maria Bravo Rosado and Emily Sandberg and
also was engaged to Brooke Burns, until they broke up in 2004 after dating for ten
months.[7] Recently, he has been spotted dating
PlayboyPlaymatesTamara Witmer and Karen McDougal[20] on different occasions. Willis has expressed interest in getting married again
and having more children.[3]
Bruce Willis was, at one point, Lutheran (specifically Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod); but no longer practices, based on a statement he
made in the July 1998 issue of George magazine:
“
Organized religions in general, in my opinion, are
dying forms", he says. "They were all very important when we didn't know why the sun moved, why
weather changed, why hurricanes occurred, or
