Bruce Willis

Bruce Willis has made a name for himself as an action hero without all the muscles and martial art kicks. Bruce was born in West Germany on 19 March 1955. His passion for drama developed in conjunction with his love of music and singing and he launched his career on Broadway.

The brute force

Although his career started out with comedies Bruce Willis found his niche as a tough guy and many still associate him most all with the Die Hard-characters and movie such as The Last Boy Scout (1991).

Willis as John McClane in Die Hard.

Die Hard
Character: John McClane | Genre: Action | Year: 1988 | Director: John McTiernan
In 1988 the action movie Die Hard made Willis a household name. Based on a police officer who fights an entire terrorist group while trying to save his wife and the hostages in the occupied building, gave birth to a new type of action hero that also was provided by Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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Science fiction

Apart from the very successful Die Hard collection covering 15 years, some of the highlights during the 90's include Twelve Monkeys and The Fifth Element which definitely showed his interest to break away from the typical hero movies. He would later return to the science fiction genre in the half-convincing Surrogates.

Willis as James Cole in Twelve Monkeys.

Twelve Monkeys
Character: James Cole | Genre: Science-fiction | Year: 1995 | Director: Terry Gilliam
One of Bruce Willis best movies, Twelve Monkeys, involves time paradoxes and can be a little hard to follow the first time. Nevertheless, in complexity and psychology it reaches high in the genre.
IMDb

Mixing the genres

In 1998 Willis had the sentimental part of audience in tears with the entertaining Armageddon block buster followed by a more dramatic role in The Sixth Sense (1999). After proving his worth in both action and drama along with extensive cameo and supporting roles, he returned to more lighthearted comedies like The Whole Nine Yards (2000) opposite Matthew Perry in which he portrays the hit man Jimmy the Tulip. It was a breath of fresh air and the movie had so much success a sequel namely The Whole Ten Yards (2004) soon followed, but became less impressive. Bruce's ambition to find more unique scripts didn't subside as he took on roles in pieces like 16 Blocks (2006) and Looper (2012).

→ Link to Bruce Willis filmography

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