Bruce Willis
☼ Born on 19 December 1955, in Idar-Oberstein, West Germany
Biography
Actor and musician Bruce Willis is well known for playing wisecracking or hard-edged characters, often in spectacular action films. Collectively, he has appeared in films that have grossed in excess of $2.5 billion USD.
Walter Bruce Willis was born on March 19, 1955, in Idar-Oberstein, West Germany, to a German mother, Marlene Kassel, and an American father, David Andrew Willis (from Carneys Point, New Jersey), who were then living on a United States military base. His family moved to the U.S. shortly after he was born, and he was raised in Penns Grove, New Jersey, where his mother worked at a bank and his father was a welder and factory worker. Willis picked up an interest for the dramatic arts in high school, and was allegedly "discovered" whilst working in a café in New York City and then appeared in a couple of off-Broadway productions. While bartending one night, he was seen by a casting director who liked his personality and needed a bartender for a small movie role.
After countless auditions, Willis contributed minor film appearances, usually uncredited, before landing the role of private eye "David Addison" alongside sultry Cybill Shepherd in the hit romantic comedy television series Moonlighting (1985). His sarcastic and wisecracking P.I. is seen by some as a dry run for the role of hard-boiled NYC detective "John McClane" in the monster hit Die Hard (1988), in which Willis' character single-handedly battled a gang of ruthless international thieves in a Los Angeles s
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kyscraper. He reprised the role of McClane in the sequel, Die Hard 2 (1990), set at a snowbound Washington's Dulles International Airport as a group of renegade Special Forces soldiers seek to repatriate a corrupt South American general. Excellent box office returns demanded a further sequel Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), this time co-starring Samuel L. Jackson as a cynical Harlem shop owner unwittingly thrust into assisting McClane during a terrorist bombing campaign on a sweltering day in New York.
Willis found time out from all the action mayhem to provide the voice of "Mikey" the baby in the very popular family comedies Look Who's Talking (1989), and its sequel Look Who's Talking Too (1990) also starring John Travolta and Kirstie Alley. Over the next decade, Willis starred in some very successful films, some very offbeat films and some unfortunate box office flops. The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) and Hudson Hawk (1991) were both large scale financial disasters that were savaged by the critics, and both are arguably best left off the CVs of all the actors involved, however Willis was still popular with movie audiences and selling plenty of theatre tickets with the hyper-violent The Last Boy Scout (1991), the darkly humored Death Becomes Her (1992) and the mediocre police thriller Striking Distance (1993).
During the 1990s, Willis also appeared in several independent and low budget productions that won him new fans and praise from the critics for his intriguing performances working with some very diverse film directors. He appeared in the oddly appealing North (1994), as a cagey prizefighter in the Quentin Tarantino directed mega-hit Pulp Fiction (1994), the Terry Gilliam directed apocalyptic thriller 12 Monkeys (1995), the Luc Besson directed sci-fi opus The Fifth Element (1997) and the M. Night Shyamalan directed spine-tingling epic The Sixth Sense (1999).
Willis next starred in the gangster comedy The Whole Nine Yards (2000), worked again with "hot" director M. Night Shyamalan in the less than gripping Unbreakable (2000), and in two military dramas, Hart's War (2002) and Tears of the Sun (2003) that both failed to really fire with movie audiences or critics alike. However, Willis bounced back into the spotlight in the critically applauded Frank Miller graphic novel turned movie Sin City (2005), the voice of "RJ" the scheming raccoon in the animated hit Over the Hedge (2006) and "Die Hard" fans rejoiced to see "John McClane" return to the big screen in the high tech Live Free or Die Hard (2007) aka "Die Hard 4.0".
Willis was married to actress Demi Moore for approximately thirteen years and they share custody to their three daughters.
In the role of actor
Lucky (24/08/2020)
A self-help author is tormented on a nightly business by a home-invading killer in Lucky. May Ryer (Brea Grant) is a notable self-help author, whose latest book hasn’t been selling as well as her first. One night. May discovers a masked invader at her house and her husband Ted (Dhruv Uday Singh) matter-of-factly mentions that […]
Glass (17/01/2019)
M. Night Shyamalan returns to the world of Unbreakable two decades later in Glass. For the past 19 years, David Dunn (Bruce Willis) has been working as a vigilante superhero the media has nicknamed “The Overseer.” With the help of his son Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark), David has been tracking down Kevin Wendell Crumb (James […]
Death Wish (04/03/2018)
Bruce Willis stars in a remake of the 1974 cult classic in Death Wish. Dr. Paul Kersey (Willis) is a trauma surgeon in Chicago, who has a seemingly happy life with his wife Lucy (Elisabeth Shue) and daughter Jordon (Camila Morrone), despite the fact that Paul’s younger brother Frank (Vincent D’Onofrio) is always asking for money. However, […]
Lucky (06/10/2017)
A 90 year old atheist navy veteran contemplates his mortality in Lucky. Living in a small town in the California desert, Lucky (Harry Dean Stanton) has a very specific daily routine, which includes doing the crossword at the local diner run or conversing with his friends at the bar. However, one day Lucky’s routine is […]
A Hard Day (03/08/2015)
A detective becomes the victim of blackmail in A Hard Day. On his way to his mother’s funeral, Detective Ko Gun-soo (Sun-kyun Lee) accidentally runs over an individual in the middle of the road. Detective Ko tries to cover up this hit-and-run and, right when it appears that he has succeeded, he receives a call from […]
Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (23/08/2014)
Nine years after the original, Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller return for more tales from Sin City. In the titular story A Dame to Kill For, photographer Dwight McCarthy (Josh Brolin) is approached for a favour by his highly seductive ex-lover Ava Lord (Eva Green). However, Dwight soon gets more than he bargained for and […]
RED 2 (24/07/2013)
Those Retired and Extremely Dangerous secret agents are back for another mission in RED 2. Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) has gotten used to living a domestic life, though the same can’t necessarily be said about his somewhat bored girlfriend Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker). Frank finds himself called back in action again when he and Marvin Boggs […]
A Good Day to Die Hard (15/02/2013)
Since the first Die Hard way back in 1988, the character of John McClane has been Bruce Willis‘ signature film character. The series returned after a 12 year absence with 2007’s Live Free or Die Hard and, six years later, John McClane returns for the fifth time with A Good Day to Die Hard. When […]
Looper (30/09/2012)
Ever since the release of the high school-set noir Brick in 2005, which I consider to be one of my all-time favourite films, I have considered Rian Johnson to be a director to keep an eye on. For his third, and most ambitious, feature Looper, Johnson reunites with Brick star Joseph Gordon-Levitt for a sci-fi […]
The Expendables 2 (18/08/2012)
When The Expendables came out in 2010, it was advertised as being the ultimate all-star action film. While it still turned out OK enough, it didn’t really turn out to be the film that it was hyped up to be. The Expendables 2, on the other hand, is exactly the film that I was expecting the […]
Moonrise Kingdom (06/06/2012)
For better or worse, Moonrise Kingdom is probably the best film Wes Anderson has made. He’s turned himself into quite an auteur over the years creating films that have a very distinct visual style. Moonrise Kingdom looks and feels like it was made in the 1960s setting of the film. The film is a coming of age […]
RED (16/10/2010)
The selling point of this film, based on a graphic novel, is the age of the lead actors, who all play retired spies forced back into action. Everything in the film is appropriately tongue-in-cheek, however the film does turn out to be a fairly decent action film in its own right. While you would expect […]
Cop Out (28/02/2010)
This is undoubtedly the most mainstream film Kevin Smith has directed. Instead of the dialogue-heavy films he is usually known for, this buddy cop action/comedy. I’ll probably say that is far from the funniest of Smith’s films, with the funniest material appearing towards the beginning. However, I do think the film is old with its […]
Surrogates (27/09/2009)
At the very least I can say that Surrogates is a decent sci-fi thriller. I’d say the film obviously has it’s flaws, but it was overall an entertaining film experience. Not really much more I can say. 8/10
Live Free or Die Hard (01/07/2007)
I had to do a lot of preparation before going to see this, the forth movie in the Die Hard series. Specifically, I had to see the other three movies. I purchased the box set on Monday and watched the films throughout the week, so I would be all caught up on the adventures of […]