Walter Bruce Willis was born on 19 March, 1955 in Idar-Oberstein, West Germany. Bruce Willis is an American actor and singer-songwriter. Bruce Willis 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. Bruce Willis was married to actress Demi Moore and they had 3 daughters before their divorce in 2000 after 13 years of marriage. Bruce Willis has released several albums and has appeared in several television shows. Bruce Willis has also starred in over 60 films, including Pulp Fiction, Sin City, Die Hard, Unbreakable, Armageddon and The Sixth SenseMotion pictures featuring Bruce Willis have grossed US$2.55 to US$3.04,000,000,000 at North American box offices, making him the 7th highest-grossing actor in a leading role, and 8th highest including supporting roles. Bruce Willis is a 2-time Emmy Award-winning, Golden Globe Award-winning, and 4-time Saturn Award-nominated actor and has publicly shown his support for the United States armed forces.
Bruce Willis is the son of a Kassel-born German mother, Marlene, who worked in a bank, and David Willis, an American soldier. Bruce Willis was the oldest of 4 children (his siblings are Florence, David, and Robert). After being discharged from the military in 1957, Bruce Willis' father took his family back to Penns Grove, New Jersey, USA where he worked as a welder and factory worker. Bruce Willis' parents separated in 1972 while Bruce Willis was in his teens. Bruce Willis was always an outgoing youngster, although he grew up with a stutter. Bruce Willis attended Penns Grove High School in his hometown. Finding it easy to express himself on stage and losing his stutter in the process, Bruce Willis began performing on stage and his high school activities were marked by such things as the drama club and school council president.
After high school, Bruce Willis took a job as a security guard and he also transported work crews at the DuPont Chambers Works factory in Deepwater, New Jersey, USA. Bruce Willis quit after a colleague was killed on the job,and became a regular at several bars. Bruce Willis learned to play the harmonica and joined an R&B band called Loose Goose. After a stint as a private investigator (a role he would play in the television series Moonlighting as well as in the 1991 film, The Last Boy Scout), Bruce Willis returned to acting. Bruce Willis enrolled in the drama programme at Montclair State University, where he was cast in the class production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Bruce Willis left school in his junior year and moved to New York City, USA.
Bruce Willis returned to the bar scene, only this time for a part-time job. After countless auditions, Bruce Willis made his theater debut in the off-Broadway production of Heaven and Earth. Bruce Willis gained more experience and exposure in Fool for Love, an appearance on television's Miami Vice, and in a Levi's commercial.
Bruce Willis left New York City and headed to California to audition for several television shows. Bruce Willis auditioned for the TV series Moonlighting (1985–89), while competing against 3,000 other actors for the position and was selected to play David Addison Jr. The starring role helped to establish him as a comedic actor, with the show lasting 5 seasons. During the height of the show's success, beverage maker Seagram hired Bruce Willis as the pitchman for their Golden Wine Cooler products. The memorable ad campaign paid the rising star between $5 and $7,000,000 over 2 years. In spite of that, Bruce Willis chose not to renew his contract with the company when he decided to stop drinking alcohol in 1988. One of his 1st major film roles was in the 1987 Blake Edwards film Blind Date alongside Kim Basinger and John Laroquette. However, it was his then-unexpected turn in the film Die Hard that catapulted him to fame. Bruce Willis performed most of his own stunts in the film, and the film grossed US$138,708,852 worldwide. Due to its box office success, the film would eventually tender 3 sequels, with the most recent entry, Live Free or Die Hard,released in June 2007. Following his success with Die Hard, he had a supporting role in the drama In Country as Vietnam veteran Emmett Smith, for which he received a Golden Globe Award nomination for "Best Performance by an Actor in Supporting Role in a Motion Picture". Bruce Willis also provided his voice for a talking baby in Look Who's Talking and its sequel.
In the late-1980s, Bruce 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 Bruce Willis has returned to the recording studio several times. In the early 1990s, Bruce 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. Bruce Willis starred in a leading role in the highly sexualized thriller Colour 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. Bruce Willis went on to play the lead roles in 12 Monkeys and The 5th Element. However, by the end of the 1990s, his career had fallen into another slump with critically panned films like The Jackal, Mercury Rising, and Breakfast of Champions, saved only by the success of the Michael Bay-directed Armageddon which was the highest grossing film of 1998 worldwide. The same year his voice and likeness were featured in the PlayStation video game Apocalypse.
In 1999, Bruce 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. Bruce Willis once had to appear in the sitcom Friends without pay, because he lost a bet to Matthew Perry, his co-star in the comedy The Whole 9 Yards and its sequel The Whole 10 Yards. Bruce Willis 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). Bruce Willis 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. Bruce 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. Bruce Willis recently appeared in the Planet Terror half of the double feature Grindhouse as the villain, a mutant soldier. This marks Bruce Willis' 2nd collaboration with director Robert Rodriguez, following Sin City.
Bruce Willis has appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman several times throughout his career. Bruce Willis filled in for an ill David Letterman on his show 26 February, 2003, when he was supposed to be a guest. Bruce Willis interviewed Dan Rather in what he would later call "the most serious conversation of my entire life". On many of his appearances on the show, Bruce Willis stages elaborate jokes, such as wearing a day-glo orange suit in honour 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 12 April, 2007, he appeared again, this time wearing a Sanjaya Malakar wig. Bruce Willis' most recent appearance was on 25 June, 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). Bruce Willis also appeared on Japanese Subaru Legacy television commercials, 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 honour of Bruce Willis. Bruce Willis has appeared in 4 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. Bruce 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.
Bruce Willis appeared on the 2008 Blues Traveler album North Hollywood Shootout, giving a spoken word performance over an instrumental blues-rock jam on the track "Free Willis (Ruminations from Behind Uncle Bob's Machine Shop)".
Bruce Willis' future projects include 3 other films that will debut between 2008 and 2009. Bruce Willis will join the Assassination of a High School President, which is a 2008 comedy where he will be a Catholic school principal and his real-life eldest daughter, Rumer, will star as a student investigating missing SAT tests. Bruce Willis' 2 2009 films will include 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 and The Last Full Measure, a drama film based on a true story about a Vietnam War veteran. Bruce Willis has also signed on to play Kane in a film adaptation of the game Kane & Lynch: Dead Men.
Bruce 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 Bruce Willis instead joined the film, The Surrogates, which is based on the comic books of the same name.
At the premiere for the film Stakeout, Bruce Willis met actress Demi Moore who was dating actor Emilio Estevez at the time. Bruce Willis married Demi Moore on 21 November, 1987 and had 3 daughters (Rumer Glenn Willis (born 1988), Scout LaRue Willis (1991) and Tallulah Belle Willis (1994)) before the couple divorced on 18 October, 2000. The couple gave no public reason for their breakup. Bruce 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. Bruce Willis and Demi Moore currently share custody of the 3 daughters they had during their 13 year union. Since their breakup, rumors persisted that the couple planned to re-marry, but Demi Moore has since married the younger actor Ashton Kutcher. Bruce Willis has maintained a close relationship with both Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, even attending their wedding. 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 10 months. In 2007, he was spotted dating Playboy Playmates Tamara Witmer and Karen McDougal on different occasions. Bruce Willis is currently dating girlfriend Emma Heming. Bruce Willis has expressed interest in getting married again and having more children.
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 volcanoes happened", he continues. "Modern religion is the end trail of modern mythology. But there are people who interpret the Bible literally. Literally!" he says incredulously. "I choose not to believe that's the way. And that's what makes America cool, you know?”
In early 2006, Bruce Willis, who usually lives in Los Angeles, moved into an apartment located in the Trump Tower in New York City. Bruce Willis also has a home in Malibu, California, a ranch in Montana, a beach home on Parrot Cay in the Turks and Caicos, and multiple properties in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Bruce Willis owns his own motion picture production company called Cheyenne Enterprises which he started with his business parter Arnold Rifkin in 2000. Bruce Willis also owns several small businesses in Hailey, Idaho including The Mint Bar and The Liberty Theater and is a co-founder of Planet Hollywood along with actors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. Bruce Willis' dog, a Yorkshire Terrier is named Wolf Fishbein ("Wolfie") after a character in the Woody Allen movie Deconstructing Harry.
Bruce Willis, an avid New Jersey Nets fan, made controversial comments on 29 April, 2007 during a live broadcast of a Nets home playoff game vs. the Toronto Raptors on TSN by saying a catch phrase from his Die Hard films, "Yipee-ki-yay motherfucker", at the end of the interview. Reacting to the backlash, he later blamed his actions on jet lag, stating: "Sometimes I overestimate my ability to function under duress with less than enough sleep".
On 5 May, 2007, someone using the screen name "Walter_B" started posting detailed responses onto Ain't it Cool News, where people were discussing the fact that Live Free or Die Hard received a PG-13 rating, instead of an R rating like the earlier 3 Die hard films.The responses included detailed information on Live Free or Die Hard, which was yet to be released; the theme of the Die Hard film series, direct criticisms of other movie crews and casts, and many movie trivia answers. "Walter_B" was Bruce Willis himself, directly posting his opinions. Many people were skeptical that "Walter_B" was indeed Bruce Willis, but on 9 May, Bruce Willis revealed his identity on a video chat session.
Bruce Willis is an avid fight fan and often attends boxing matches. Bruce Willis has attended both the Floyd Mayweather, Jr. v Ricky Hatton and Joe Calzaghe v Bernard Hopkins fights, which have come to be known as the 'British Invasion' fights, after the popularity of the 'British Invasion' bands of the 1960s to the late 1970s in America.
Having begun to suffer from Male Pattern Baldness at a relatively young age (his receding hairline is visibly starting by Die Hard), Bruce Willis chose to shave his head once the loss was too severe to stylistically hide. However, he has worn a hairpiece or a toupee for several of his roles - but only when the character is known to have hair (such as in Sin City). Bruce Willis is one of the very few actors in Hollywood who has not pursued hair replacement in his personal life, and this has endeared him to the millions of men who themselves suffer from hair loss.
Bruce Willis is close friends with Matthew Perry.
In 2007, Bruce Willis stated he was not in favour of war in Iraq, but instead liked, “to support the young men and women who are over there participating in the war.” Bruce Willis has endorsed every Republican presidential candidate except Bob Dole in 1996, because Dole had criticized Demi Moore for her role in the movie Striptease. Bruce Willis was an invited speaker at the 2000 Republican National Convention,and continues to vocally support gun ownership. Bruce Willis has criticized the religious right and its influence on the Republican party. In February 2006, Bruce Willis appeared in Manhattan to talk about 16 Blocks with reporters. One reporter attempted to ask Bruce Willis about his opinion on current events but was interrupted by Bruce Willis in mid-sentence:
“ I'm sick of answering this fucking question. I'm a Republican only as far as I want a smaller government, I want less government intrusion. I want them to stop shitting on my money and your money and tax dollars that we give 50 percent of... every year. I want them to be fiscally responsible and I want these goddamn lobbyists out of Washington. Do that and I'll say I'm a Republican... I hate the government, OK? I'm apolitical. Write that down. I'm not a Republican.”
In several June 2007 interviews, he declared that he still maintains some Republican ideologies but is currently an independent. In an interview for the June 2007 issue of Vanity Fair, Bruce Willis said he was skeptical that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and suggested that some people involved in the assassination are still in power today.
In 2006, he proposed that the United States should invade Colombia in order to end the drug trafficking. In several interviews with USA Weekend, Bruce Willis has said that he supports large salaries for teachers, and says that he is disappointed in the United States' foster care and treatment of Native Americans. Bruce Willis also stated that he is a big supporter of gun rights:
"Everyone has a right to bear arms. If you take guns away from legal gun owners, then the only people who have guns are the bad guys." Even a pacifist, he insists, would get violent if someone were trying to kill him. "You would fight for your life."
Throughout his film career, Bruce Willis has depicted several military characters in films such as The Siege, Hart's War, Tears of the Sun, and Grindhouse. Growing up in a military family, Bruce Willis has been publicly supportive of the United States armed forces. In 2002, Bruce Willis' youngest daughter, Tallulah, suggested that he purchase Girl Scout cookies to send to troops. Bruce Willis purchased 12,000 boxes of cookies, and they were distributed to sailors aboard USS John F. Kennedy and other troops stationed throughout the Middle East at the time. In 2003, Bruce Willis visited Iraq as part of the USO tour, singing to the troops with his band, The Accelerators. Some reports from military officials suggest that Bruce Willis tried to enlist in the military to help fight the 2nd Iraq war, but he was turned away because of his age. It was believed he offered $1,000,000 to any civilian who turns in terrorist leaders Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; in the June 2007 issue of Vanity Fair, however, he clarified that the statement was made hypothetically and not meant to be taken literally. Bruce Willis has also criticized the media for its coverage of the war, complaining that the press were more likely to focus on the negative aspects of the war:
“I went to Iraq because what I saw when I was over there was soldiers — young kids for the most part — helping people in Iraq; helping getting the power turned back on, helping get hospitals open, helping get the water turned back on and you don't hear any of that on the news. You hear, 'X number of people were killed today,' which I think does a huge disservice. It's like spitting on these young men and women who are over there fighting to help this country.”
Bruce Willis has said that he wants to "make a pro-war film in which American soldiers will be depicted as brave fighters for freedom and democracy." The film will follow members of Deuce 4,the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, who spent considerable time in Mosul and were decorated heavily for it. The film is to be based on the writings of blogger Michael Yon, a former United States Army Special Forces Green Beret who was embedded with Deuce 4 and sent regular dispatches about their activities. Bruce Willis described the plot of the film as "these guys who do what they are asked for very little money to defend and fight for what they consider to be freedom." Bruce Willis does not appear to have spoken publicly about his plans for this movie since 2005.
Since March 2008,Bruce Willis has been playing the role of the 'Child Catcher' in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the London Palladium.
In 1996, Roger Director, a writer and producer from Moonlighting wrote a roman à clef on Willis titled A Place to Fall. Cybill Shepherd wrote in her 2000 autobiography, Cybill Disobedience, that Bruce Willis was angry at Director, because the character was written as a "neurotic, petulant actor."
In 1998 Bruce Willis participated in Apocalypse, a Sony Playstation game. The game was originally announced to feature Bruce Willis but was soon discovered he appeared as a sidekick, not as the main character. The company reworked the game using Bruce Willis' likeness and voice and changed the game to use him as the main character.
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