Bruce Willis

It is little known that Walter Bruce Willis was born on March 19, 1955, at the Idar-Oberstein military base, a German town. It turns out that his father, David Willis, was an American soldier stationed in Germany, where he met the love of his life, Marlena, the actor’s mother. When Bruce was two years old, the family moved to Pennsgrove, a small town in New Jersey. There he spent the rest of his childhood, finished his studies and enrolled at Montclair Stage, a drama school. When he finished, he decided to move to New York to try his luck as a stage actor. In need of money, Willis made a living as a waiter, and he was pretty bad at it. One night, a casting director went to have a few beers at the bar where Bruce Willis worked. He liked the way the actor was so much that he hired him as an extra in The First Deadly Sin ., where he was not even mentioned in the credits. This little job increased the self-confidence of the actor, who managed to be selected for various theatrical roles. At that time he cultivated his great hobby, music, playing the harmonica with groups of different styles. He would soon begin to gain notoriety with his television work. He made his small screen debut as an arms dealer in Miami Vice . Next, he caused a sensation with the series Moonlight , which won him an Emmy – the highest award for American television – for his role as a detective who ran an agency with Cybill Shepherd . Willis became very popular and in 1986 he released a rock album titled The Return of Bruno ., which was a bestseller.

He then went to theaters with the Blake Edwards comedy Blind Date , where he met Kim Basinger , a good girl who became crazy if she drank alcohol. And although the film was a slightly concealed variation of My Girl’s Beast and What’s Wrong, Doctor? , with some traced gags , had an air of classic comedy that made him successful on the billboards. Willis would reprise Edwards’ orders in Murder in Beverly Hills , which went largely unnoticed. Little affected by this failure to the career of Willis, chosen among many candidates because he would add humor to his character by producer Joel Silver and director John McTiernan for Die Hard , one of the most spectacular movies of all time. Infusing three-dimensionality into the protagonist, a vulnerable man affected by marital problems who faced dangerous barefoot terrorists, Willis forever changed the action genre, until then dominated by inhuman and unreliable Rambo-style superheroes. Willis brought back John McClane’s memorable character in four sequels, The Jungle 2. Red Alert and Die Hard Jungle 3. Vengeance , The Jungle 4.0 and The Jungle: A Good Day to Die , inferior to the original but enjoyable enough.

Willis was so high at the time that he could afford the occasional flop, such as Norman Jewison ‘s drama Memories of War , the failed adaptation of The Bonfire of the Vanities, and The Great Falcon , a surreal and boring robbery comedy. . Paradoxically, the actress Demi Moore , unknown when she married Bruce Willis, became a star with Ghost . And although the couple divorced in 2000, before Willis and Moore had three children. “I’m more proud to be a father than to be an actor,” Willis said.

On the screens, Willis was once again successful, especially when he returned to action territory with The Last Boy Scout . He also did memorable jobs as an abusive husband in Deadly Thoughts –Co-starring his wife Demi Moore-, and as a surgeon in Death Suits You So Good . At that time, his interpretation of Butch Coolidge, the jinxed boxer from Quentin Tarantino ‘s Pulp Fiction , stands out , with whom he would repeat in a small role in Four Rooms . Precisely, one of Willis’ hallmarks is that the directors he works with are usually satisfied and repeat with him, such as Robert Benton (Billy Bathgate , Not a Fool ), and Rob Reiner ( A Boy Called North , Our Story ). Especially significant is the case of M. Night Shyamalan , who gave him two of his best roles, in The Sixth Sense and The Protected One . In recent years, Willis’s career has distinguished itself by spanning diverse genres, including science fiction ( The Fifth Element ,  12 Monkeys , Armageddon ), comedy ( The Boy , False Appearances ), and war thrillers ( War of Hart ,tears of the sun ). In any case, it seems that the public continues to prefer him in action films, such as Hostage , Sin City and the crime film 16 streets , directed by Richard Donner . He has also been in Alpha Dog , a Nick Cassavetes drama.

Although he continued to work at a good pace, almost always in action titles, the quality of his filmography was declining. Among his most outstanding films in recent years, The Surrogates , Looper , Moonrise Kingdom and Orphans of Brooklyn stand out , but they were almost the exception to the rule. He also agreed to join the action actors of his generation in that Stallone-driven B-series, in the second installment, The Expendables 2 . At the end of March 2021, he announced his withdrawal from the screens because he suffered from aphasia, a disease that makes it difficult for him to speak, essential for his work.