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Action Movie Star Actor Bruce Willis Movie Posters star of Die Hard Movies, the Sixth Sense, & Moonlighting tv show |
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Willis was born in Idar-Oberstein, West
Germany, the son of a Kassel-born German, Marlene, who worked in a bank,
and David Willis, an American soldier. Willis was the eldest of four
children: he has a sister Florence and a brother David. His brother Robert
died of pancreatic cancer in 2001, aged 42. After being discharged from
the military in 1957, Willis' father took his family back to Penns Grove,
New Jersey, where he worked as a welder and factory worker. His parents
separated in 1972, while Willis was in his teens.Willis attended Penns
Grove High School in his hometown, where he encountered issues with a
stutter. He used to be hatefully nicknamed Buck-Buck by his schoolmates.
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 student council
president. Willis left New York City and headed to
California to audition for several television shows. He auditioned for the
role of David Addison Jr. of the television series Moonlighting (1985–89),
while competing against 3,000 other actors for the position.The starring
role, opposite Cybill Shepherd, 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 advertising campaign paid the rising star
between $5–7 million over two years. In spite of that, Willis chose not to
renew his contract with the company when he decided to stop drinking
alcohol in 1988. 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",
promoted by a Spinal Tap-like rockumentary parody 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 the early 1990s, Willis' career suffered a moderate
slump starring in flops such as The Bonfire of the Vanities, Striking
Distance, and a film he co-wrote entitled Hudson Hawk, among others. He
starred in a leading role in the highly sexualized thriller Color of Night
(1994), which was very poorly received by critics, but has become popular
on video. However, in 1994, he had a supporting role in Quentin
Tarantino's acclaimed Pulp Fiction, which gave a new boost to his career.
In 1996, he was the executive producer of the cartoon Bruno the Kid which
featured a CGI representation of himself. In 2000, Willis won an 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).[20] 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 (2004), he makes a cameo appearance as himself. In 2007, he appeared in the Planet Terror half of the double feature Grindhouse as the villain, a mutant soldier. This marks Willis' second collaboration with director Robert Rodriguez, following Sin City. Willis has appeared in four movies with
Samuel L. Jackson (National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1, Pulp Fiction, Die
Hard with a Vengeance, and Unbreakable) and both actors were slated to
work together in Black Water Transit, before dropping out. Willis also
worked alongside his eldest daughter, Rumer, in the 2005 film Hostage. In
2007, he appeared in the thriller Perfect Stranger, opposite Halle Berry,
the crime/drama film Alpha Dog, opposite Sharon Stone, and marked his
return to the role of John McClane in Live Free or Die Hard. His most
recent role was in the film What Just Happened. Willis' future projects include several
films that will debut between 2009 and 2010. Willis was slated to play
U.S. Army general William R. Peers in director Oliver Stone's Pinkville, a
drama about the investigation of the 1968 My Lai Massacre. However, due to
the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike, the film was cancelled and
Willis took up the film, The Surrogates, which is based on the comic book
of the same name.
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