Bruce Willis

At 69 years old, Bruce Willis has this physical status:

Walter Bruce Willis (born March 19, 1955) is an American actor, producer, and singer.

He was born in Idar-Oberstein, Germany, to a German mother and American father. His family immigrated to the United States in 1957.

In the 1970s, his career began on the Off-Broadway stage.

He rose to fame with his leading role on the hit television series Moonlighting (1985–89).

He has since appeared in more than 70 films and is widely regarded as a "action hero" because of his portrayal of John McClane in the Die Hard franchise (1988–2013) and other similar roles. Death Becomes Her (1994), Pulp Fiction (1994), The Jackal (1995), Armageddon and Memory (1995), The Fifth Element, (2012), Looper (2012), and Unbreakable Film Series: Unbreakable (2000), Split (2016) and Glass (2019).

In 2015, he made his Broadway debut in Misery's stage version.

Willis' debut album, The Return of Bruno, was released in 1987 by the singer as a musician.

Since 1989 and 2001, he has had two more solo albums since then. Willis has been nominated for several prestigious awards, including a Golden Globe, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and two People's Choice Awards.

In 2006, he was named on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as the first black actor.

Early life

Walter Bruce Willis was born in Idar-Oberstein, West Germany, on March 19, 1955. Marlene, his mother, was a German immigrant from Kassel, was born in Germany. David Willis, his father, was an American soldier. Willis has a younger sister, Florence, and two younger brothers, Robert (deceased) and David. Since being discharged from the military in 1957, his father moved the family to Carneys Point, New Jersey, where they had been relocated. Willis has referred to his experience as a "long line of blue-collar people." His mother worked in a bank and his father was a welder, master mechanic, and factory worker.

Willis, who had a stutter, attended Penns Grove High School, where his classmates referred to him as "Buck-Buck." He joined the drama club, discovered that being on stage silenced his stutter, and was eventually elected student council president.

Willis joined the Salem Nuclear Power Plant in 1973 as a security guard and transported crew members, as well as transport crew members at the DuPont Chambers Works factory in Deepwater, New Jersey. He went back to acting after serving as a private investigator (a role he would reprise in the comedy-drama series Moonlighting and the action-comedy film The Last Boy Scout). He enrolled in Montclair State University's Drama Department, where he was cast in a production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He left school in 1977 and moved to New York City, where he helped himself in the early 1980s as a bartender at the Manhattan art bar Kamikaze while staying in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood.

Personal life

Gary Cooper, Robert De Niro, Steve McQueen, and John Wayne are Willis' acting role models. He is left-handed. He and his family live in Brentwood, Los Angeles's Brentwood neighborhood.

Willis met actress Demi Moore at the premiere of his film Stakeout. They married on November 21, 1987, and they had three children, including Rumer, who was born in August 1988. On June 24, 1998, Willis and Moore announced their separation. They filed for divorce on October 18, 2000, and the divorce was finalized later that day. "I felt I had failed as a father and a husband by not being able to make it work," Willis said of the divorce. Will Smith praised actor Will Smith for his assistance in coping with the crisis. He has maintained a close friendship with Moore and her new husband, actor Ashton Kutcher, and they were invited to their wedding.

After ten months together, Willis was engaged to actress Brooke Burns before they broke up in 2004. On March 21, 2009, he married model Emma Heming in Turks and Caicos, and his three children, as well as Moore and Kutcher, were among the guests. Since the marriage was not legally binding, the couple married in a civil ceremony in Beverly Hills six days later. The couple has two children, one born in 2012 and another in 2014.

Willis was a Lutheran, but he no longer practices. "Organized religions in general, in my opinion, are dying forms," he wrote in a July 1998 interview with George magazine. They were all extremely important when we didn't know why the sun moved, why weather changed, why hurricanes occurred, or volcanoes occurred. Modern mythology is the end of modern mythology. However, there are people who read the Bible literally.

Literally!

I refuse to believe that is the way. "You know," America is cool, and that's what makes it cool."

Willis and then-wife Demi Moore campaigned for Democratic Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis' presidential bid in 1988. He endorsed President George H. Bush for reelection four years as an outspoken critic of Bill Clinton. However, in 1996, Dole refused to endorse Clinton's Republican rival Bob Dole, despite Dole's outrage over her role in the film striptease. Willis was an invited speaker at the 2000 Republican National Convention and endorsed George W. Bush that year. In the 2008 presidential election, he made no contributions or public endorsements. In several interviews in June 2007, he maintained that he held certain Republican ideologies.

In 2006, he said that the US should intervene more in Colombia in order to put an end to drug trafficking. Willis has stated that he favors large salaries for teachers and police officers, and that he is dissatisfied with the US foster care system as well as the care of Native Americans in several interviews. Willis also stated that he supports gun rights, saying, "everyone has the right to bear arms." If you take guns away from lawful gun owners, the only ones who have guns are the criminals."

Willis was in Manhattan in February 2006 to promote his film 16 Blocks with reporters. One reporter tried to reach Willis about his opinion about the Bush administration but Willis interrupted him in mid-sentence: "I'm sick of answering this fucking question." I'm a Republican, but I only want a smaller government, but I want less government intrusion. We want them to stop shitting on my money and your taxes, as well as federal and state funds, which we get every year. I want them to be fiscally responsible, and I want these goddamn lobbyists out of Washington. I'll say I'm a Republican if I do that.

I hate the government, OK?

I'm apolitical. Describe it down. I'm not a Republican.

Willis' name appeared in an advertisement in the Los Angeles Times on August 17, 2006, which condemned Hamas and Hezbollah and praised Israel in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war.

Willis has portrayed several military characters in films including In Country, The Siege, Hart's War, Tears of the Sun, Grindhouse, and G.I. Joe: Retaliation. Willis has sold Girl Scout cookies for the United States Armed forces as a teenager growing up in a military family. Tallulah, Willis' then-8-year-old daughter, suggested that he purchase Girl Scout cookies to send to troops in 2002. Willis ordered 12,000 boxes of cookies, which were delivered to sailors on USS John F. Kennedy and other troops stationed around the Middle East at the time.

Willis visited Iraq as part of the USO tour in 2003, performing with his band, The Accelerators, while visiting the troops. Willis considered joining the military to help combat the second Iraq War, but his age prevented him from participating. In the June 2007 issue of Vanity Fair, however, it was reported that he offered $1 million to any noncombatant who turns in terrorist leaders Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; however, he later clarified that the statement was hypothetical and not meant to be taken literally. Willis has also criticized the media for its coverage of the war, claiming that the news were more likely to focus on the negative aspects of the conflict.

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Career

Willis was cast as David Addison Jr. of the television series Moonlight (1985-1989), competing against 3,000 other actors for the role. He was born with the ability to perform in Moonlighting, opposite Cybill Shepherd, and helped establish him as a comedic actor. He received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Television Series Musical or Comedy during the show's five seasons. Willis, the beer maker, was hired as the pitchman for their Golden Wine Cooler items during the show's popularity. Willis' advertising budget increased between $5 and $7 million over two years. Willis decided not to renew his deal when he decided not to drink alcohol in 1988.

Willis appeared in a film directed by Blake Edwards in 1987 Blake Edwards' Blind Date, starring Kim Basinger and John Larroquette. In Sunset (1988), Edwards cast him again as the true-life cowboy actor Tom Mix. However, it was his unexpected appearance in the film Die Hard (1988) as John McClane, which brought him to fame as a film star and action hero. The film's grosses reached $138,708,852 worldwide, and he appeared in the majority of his own stunts. Willis played a key role in the success of Die Hard (1990) and the sequel Look Who's Talking Too (1990).

Willis had modest success as a recording artist, releasing "Respect Yourself," which featured the Pointer Sisters. Willis' appearances at important events, including Woodstock, were promoted on a Spinal Tape-like rockumentary parody. As a second single, he offered a Drifters song "Under the Boardwalk" as a second single; it debuted at No. 78. On the UK Singles Chart, there were two on the chart, but in the United States, it was less popular. Willis has returned to the recording studio several times.

Willis reprised his role in Die Hard 2 (1990) and Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), having gained a lot of personal success and pop culture following John McClane's appearance in Die Hard. These first three installments in the Die Hard series earned over US$700 million globally, and Willis was pushed to the first rank of Hollywood action stars.

Willis' career suffered in the early 1990s, when he appeared in flops like The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) and Hudson Hawk (1991), but he did succeed in box office with The Last Boy Scout. He gained more fame with Striking Distance (1993) (1993): critics chastised it, but Color of Night (1994): it was successful in the home video market, but it was also one of the top 20 most rented films in the United States in 1995. Maxim also rated his sex scene in the film as the best in film history.

Willis was also a lead actor in one piece of Quentin Tarantino's acclaimed Pulp Fiction in 1994; the film's success gave him a boost in his career; and he appeared alongside his Look Who's Talking co-star John Travolta. He was the executive producer and actor of Bruno the Kid in 1996, which included a CGI version of himself. He appeared in Beavis and Butt-head Do America with his then-wife Demi Moore in the same year. He plays "Muddy Grimes," a drunken criminal who wrongfully sends Judge's titular characters to murder his wife, Dallas, which was played by Moore. He appeared in 12 Monkeys (1995) and The Fifth Element (1997). However, by the time of the 1990s, his career had fallen into another slump with critically panned films like The Jackal (which, despite poor reviews), Mercury Rising, and Breakfast of Champions, as well as the production of Broadway Brawler, which Willis had agreed to appear in as compensation for the failed film, which turned out to be the highest-grossing film of 1998 globally. In the PlayStation video game Apocalypse, the same year his voice and likeness were included. Willis appeared in M. Night Shyamalan's film The Sixth Sense in 1999, which was both a commercial and critical hit.

Willis received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series in 2000 (in which he played the father of Ross Geller's much-younger niece). He was also nominated for a 2001 American Comedy Award (in the Funniest Male Guest Appearance in a TV Series category) for his role on Friends. Willis played Jimmy "The Tulip" Tudeski with Matthew Perry in The Whole Nine Yards in 2000. Willis was first portrayed as Terry Benedict in Ocean's Eleven (2001), but he later moved to work on recording an album. He makes a cameo appearance as himself in the sequel Ocean's Twelve (2004). He appeared in the film version of Sin City in 2005. In Over the Hedge, he lent his voice as RJ the Raccoon. He appeared in the Planet Terror half of the double feature Grindhouse in 2007 as the villain, a mutant soldier. Following Sin City, Willis' second collaboration with director Robert Rodriguez was a success.

Willis appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman several times throughout his career. On his show February 26, 2003, when he was supposed to be a visitor, he filled in for an ill David Letterman. Willis performed elaborate parody of David Blaine, wearing a day-glo orange suit in honor of the Central Park gates, showing one side of his face with simulated birdshot wounds after the Harry Whittington shooting, or trying to beat a record of staying submerged for only twenty seconds (a parody of David Blaine).

He appeared again on April 12, 2007, this time sporting a Sanjaya Malakar wig. He wore a mini-wind turbine on his head during a joke about his own fictional film titled An Unappealing Hunch, which is a play on An Inconvenient Truth). Willis has appeared in Japanese Subaru Legacy television commercials. In honor of Willis, Subaru produced a limited run of Legacy Touring Bruce, tied to this.

Willis has appeared in five films with Samuel L. Jackson (National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1, Pulp Fiction, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Unbreakable, and Glass) and both actors were supposed to work together in Black Water Transit before falling out. In the 2005 film Hostage, Willis appeared with his eldest daughter, Rumer. He appeared in the thriller Perfect Stranger, opposite Halle Berry, the crime/drama film Alpha Dog, opposite Sharon Stone, and in Live Free or Die Hard, John McClane reprised his role as John McClane. He appeared in the films What Just Happened and Surrogates, which was based on the same comic book.

Willis was supposed to appear in director Oliver Stone's Pinkville, a drama about the investigation into the 1968 My Lai massacre. However, the film was canceled due to the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike. Willis appeared on the 2008 Blues Traveler album North Hollywood Shootout, a spoken word protester against an instrumental blues rock jam on the track "Free Willis (Ruminations from Behind Uncle Bob's Machine Shop). In early 2009, he was involved in an advertising campaign to announce Norwich Union's name change to Aviva.

Willis appeared in Tracy Morgan's comedy Cop Out, directed by Kevin Smith, about two police detectives probing the robbery of a baseball card. In February 2010, the film was released. Willis appeared in Gorillaz's song "Stylo" on YouTube. In the film The Expendables, he appeared in a cameo with former Planet Hollywood co-owners and 1980s action stars Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Willis played "Mr. Church," a generic bald man. This was the first time these three well-known action movie stars appeared on film together. Despite the fact that the three scenes together was short, it was one of the film's most awaited scenes. On October 24, 2009, the trio caught their scene in a crowded church. Willis appeared in RED, an adaptation of the comic book mini-series of the same name in which he portrayed Frank Moses. On October 15, 2010, the film was released.

Willis appeared in Moonrise Kingdom (2012) alongside Bill Murray, Edward Norton, and Frances McDormand. In 2011, Wes Anderson's documentary filming took place in Rhode Island. Willis was back, but in a new capacity, in The Expendables 2 (2012). Joe is a fictional character in the sci-fi action film Looper (2012) as the older version of Gordon-Levitt's character.

Willis teamed up with 50 Cent in a David Barrett film Fire with Fire, starring Josh Duhamel and Rosario Dawson, about a fireman who must save the love of his life. In Lay the Favorite, directed by Stephen Frears, Willis also joined Vince Vaughn and Catherine Zeta-Jones about a Las Vegas cocktail waitress who becomes a top professional gambler. Lionsgate Entertainment released the two films.

Willis reprised his most well-known role, John McClane, for the fifth time, appearing in A Good Day to Die Hard, which was released on February 14, 2013. In an interview, Willis said, "I have a warm spot in my heart for Die Hard"; perhaps the sheer novelty of being able to play the same character for 25 years and then be asked back is amusing." It's much more difficult to do a film again and try to be a better version of myself, which is what I do in Die Hard. "I try to do my best work every day."

Willis performed on Saturday Night Live with Katy Perry as a musical guest on October 12, 2013.

Willis made his Broadway debut in William Goldman's adaptation of Stephen King's book Misery opposite Laurie Metcalf at the Broadhurst Theatre in 2015. Critics generally panned his result, who referred to it as "vacant" and "inert." In a program broadcast on July 29, 2018, Willis was the subject of a comedic roast by Comedy Central.

Willis' films have earned between US$2.64 billion and $3.05 billion at the North American box offices, making him the eighth highest-grossing actor in a leading role and the eighth highest-grossing actor in a leading role and 12th in supporting roles. He has been nominated for a Saturn Award four times, including two-time Emmy Award winners, as well as a Golden Globe Award winner.

Willis portrayed Doraemon in Japan's SoftBank 5G ads in 2020. During the pandemic in California, he was asked to leave a Los Angeles Rite Aid store for not wearing a mask to shield against COVID-19. Later in life, Willis said, "it was an error in decision." "Be safe out there everybody, and let's keep masking!"

Willis appeared in many low-budget independent action-thriller and science fiction films in the later years of his career. The majority of these films were released direct-to-video and were widely condemned by critics, with Chris Nashawaty of Esquire describing them as "a lucrative safe harbor for actors of a certain age" similar to The Expendables. Willis would usually earn $2 million for two days of production at an average of 15 minutes per film. Randall Emmett's twenty photographs were made. Willis' name was given to him in promotional materials, but they did not include him in "roughly half" of the film, so much that Cosmic Sin (2021) was criticized for including Willis in "roughly half" of the scene.

Willis's film colleagues said he was confused, didn't know why he was there, and had to be led lines through an earpiece. The screenwriter was asked to minimize his role and abbreviate his dialogue days before Willis' appearance on set for Out of Death (2021), but the producer was warned that he'll have to finish all of Willis' scenes within one day of filming. The Golden Raspberry Awards, an annual award for the year's best films and performances, included a separate category for Worst Bruce Willis Performance in a 2021 Film for his roles in eight films released that year.

Willis' family declared that he was not retiring on March 30, 2022, as a result of brain damage caused by damage to the area of the brain that controls language expression and comprehension. The Golden Raspberry Awards' Willis category was suspended, arguing that awarding a Golden Raspberry to someone whose health was impacted by a medical condition was inappropriate. Willis had completed eight films by the time of his retirement, in 2022 and 2023.

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