Facts about Bruce Willis
Bruce Willis Biography
Bruce Willis hit it big in Hollywood as the scrappy action hero John McClane in the 1988 terrorists-in-the-skyscraper film Die Hard. He went on to an unusual career of Hollywood stardom built on 65% fast-action tough guys and 35% quirky character roles, before his career was cut short by dementia.
Bruce Willis grew up in New Jersey and began acting in college. He partnered with Cybill Shepherd in the offbeat TV detective romance Moonlighting (1985-89), which made him a TV star.
During the show’s run he made the leap to the big screen, starring in Blind Date with Kim Basinger before taking his turn as disillusioned cop John McClane in Die Hard. The film was a smashing success and spawned the sequels, Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990), Die Hard With A Vengeance (1995, with Samuel L. Jackson), Live Free or Die Hard (2007, with Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and A Good Day to Die Hard (2013).
Willis followed up his Die Hard success with action films good and bad (the notorious 1991 flop Hudson Hawk, the huge 1994 hit Pulp Fiction), 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 his much-appreciated appearance in Pulp Fiction (with Ving Rhames) and a turn as a small-town businessman in Nobody’s Fool (also 1994, opposite Paul Newman).
Bruce Willis developed a reputation for keeping busy, and his other films include: 12 Monkeys (1995, co-starring Brad Pitt); the goofy sci-fi action-comedy The Fifth Element (1997); 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); the animated comedy Over the Hedge (2006, also with the voice of Steve Carell); the semi-geriatric spy adventures Red and Red 2 (2010 and 2013); and the gambling caper Lay The Favorite (2012, with Vince Vaughn).
In 2014, his career took an odd turn: he began to appear almost exclusively in dozens of direct-to-video films with titles like Extraction (2015), Marauders (2016), Acts of Violence (2018), and Hard Kill (2020). Fans were confused, and critics noted that his performances often seemed wooden. In 2021, the parody Razzie awards nominated Willis for “worst performance” in eight different films.
In March of 2022, Willis’s family announced that he was retiring from acting after being diagnosed with aphasia, a neurological problem that impairs people’s ability to speak, read, and understand words. The next year, in February of 2023, the family announced that Willis had frontotemporal dementia, or FTD. “Cast and crew who had worked with Willis in recent years suggested there had been signs of his cognitive decline on set,” reported The Guardian.
Extra credit
Bruce Willis married model Emma Heming on March 21, 2009. It was Willis’s second marriage, Heming’s first. He was 54 and she 30 at the time of the wedding… Bruce Willis and Demi Moore were married from 1987-2000. They have 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… Bruce 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 sang at times with his backup band, The Accelerators… Bruce Willis was born in Germany, where his father was an American soldier. His mother, Marlene, was a German national… After Bruce Willis’s diagnosis with aphasia, the Razzie awards rescinded their 2021 nominations for Willis, citing his illness.