Bruce Willis Biography:

Walter Bruce Willis was born on a military base in Idar-Oberstein (former West Germany), on March 19, 1955. His father David was a welder and Industrial worker who moved the Willis family to New Jersey after being leaving from the military in 1957.

Putting down roots in New Jersey, teenager Bruce, who was the oldest of four siblings, had a very active childhood. While he was constantly a friendly teenager, Willis grew up with a stutter and found it easier to express himself while on stage, performing in front of spectators. This is why he joined any team or organization that called for being in front of other people such as the drama club and the student council management.

Rather than attend a university after graduating high school, Willis took the industrial path of his father as a manual laborer, transporting work crews at the DuPont factory from location to location. He decided to quit after a coworker was killed on the job, only to became a regular at several local watering holes. Willis also revealed an instinctive talent for playing the harmonica, and played with a rhythm and blues ensemble called the Loose Goose.

After a job as a bodyguard (which he essentially plays in his recent production, "Unbreakable", Willis came back to his initial love -  acting. He enlisted in the drama program at Montclair State College, where he was cast in the creation of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". The striving senior ultimately decided to drop out of the university in search of more worthwhile movie roles so he left for the place he thought held the best chance of success - New York City.

Willis returned to the bar scene, only this go round for a job, and as a means to make contacts with New York celebrities. After nonstop auditions, Willis finally made his theater introduction in the off-Broadway invention of "Heaven and Earth". He garnered more experience and publicity in "Fool for Love", and a small role on television's "Miami Vice", and ended the year with a television commercial for Levi's jeans.

Bruce Willis got his big Hollywood break when he accepted the role as smart-alecky David Addison, in the ABC detective television drama "Moonlighting", even as production and network executives were looking for a more identifiable and already known celebrity . Willis and Cybill Shepherd's chemistry made "Moonlighting" a sensation, and after five seasons of sexual anxiety and great ratings, Moonlighting's was not picked up again.

After a drubbing in the screwball comedy "Blind Date" (1987) with Kim Basinger, Willis found what would become his trademark role in 1988; police officer John McClane in the adventure thriller, "Die Hard" (1988). Willis then lent his voice talent to the slow moving and dull comedy "Look Who's Talking" (1989) with John Travolta and Kirstie Alley, and repeated his "Die Hard" character in the sequel "Die Hard 2" (1990).

Unfortunately, Willis' career was on its way fading out. He starred in repeated bombs, such as "The Bonfire of the Vanities" with Tom Hanks and Morgan Freeman, "Hudson Hawk", about a cat burglar who is forced to steal DaVinci works of art for a world domination plot. Next was "Death Becomes Her" with Meryl Streep, and "Striking Distance" (co-starring the charismatic Sarah Jessica Parker), about a man coming from a police family who ends up fighting his uncle after the murder of his father. Bruce Willis then started gaining more publicity for his famous marriage to the beautiful, Demi Moore.

Fortunately, his role in 1991's "The Last Boy Scout" showed Willis in the style of action hero role that gave him celebrity status in the first place, which helped keep money coming in to support his Hollywood lifestyle. But it was his role as Butch Coolidge in the runaway smash hit film, "Pulp Fiction", that gave Willis the smash hit miracle that saved his career. The star studded cast of celebrities such as Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman and John Travolta, showed that Willis could hold his own among the top rated celebrities of the day.

He followed up his 1994 "Pulp Fiction" role with a brilliant performance in "Nobody's Fool", and returned to his roots once again blockbuster, "Die Hard: With a Vengeance" with Samuel L. Jackson, the third chapter of the profitable franchise. It was easy money from this point on, with smash hit movies "Twelve Monkeys", co-starring Brad Pitt, 1997's "Fifth Element", opposite the flawless Milla Jovovich, and the smash hit "Armageddon" with its all-star cast of A-list celebrities like Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Affleck, and Liv Tyler, made this flick one of the most financially successful of any of his projects.

In 1999, Willis starred in the film revision of the tale by the same title, "Breakfast of Champions", and was ushered into the $20 million club with his frightening role in "The Sixth Sense". The award winning, critically applauded movie that featured Willis as child child psychiatrist Dr. Malcolm Crowe should be seen as one of his best roles in his career. Next Willis co-starred with Michelle Pfeiffer in the riveting and very clever "The Story of Us" about a married couple who goes through hard times after fifteen years of marriage, and then starred as mob member Jimmy "The Tulip" in the second-rate, "The Whole Nine Yards."

It was on the set of that flick that Willis became friends with "Friends" star Matthew Perry, which led to Willis' Emmy winning serial role in the smash hit and now famous NBC television situation comedy. 

On the big screen, Willis was back to being smart-ass in "Bandits" with (2001), playing a prison fugitive who robs a number of banks with his self absorbed cohort (Billy Bob Thornton), and both men fall madly in love with a fugitive housewife (Cate Blanchett). Willis was better utilized as an American prisoner of war overseeing a murder trial in the WWII drama "Hart's War" with Colin Farrell (2002), then as the organizer of a special operations force on a search and rescue mission in the jungles of Africa in "Tears of the Sun" (2003). That year he also voiced the animated dog Spike in "Rugrats Go Wild" and had an small cameo in "Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle" alongside the sexy celebrity trio of Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore.  

Bruce Willis showed up with an additional cameo appearance, playing himself in "Ocean's 12" (2004), the sequel to the 2001 adventure comedy hit starring his good friends Julia Roberts, George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Bruce came back to the thriller adventure roles with "Hostage" (2005). In the film, he was a botched police hostage negotiator who finds himself forced to count on his old talents to save his divided family.

Next, Willis was welcomed with media applause in the highly acclaimed "Sin City" starring Jessica Alba (2005), Robert Rodriguez's visually striking variation of Frank Miller's crime era comic book series. In one of the actors best movie roles, "That Yellow Bastard," Bruce had the inspiring role of Hartigan, a gracious, but tired and troubled police officer who goes to jail rather than lead the crooked family of a pedophile to the victim he rescued.

Returning to animation, Willis lent his voice to the calculating and cunning raccoon, RJ, in DreamWorks’ “Over the Hedge” (2005), a witty comedy about a band of forest creatures trying to salvage a nearby backyard after waking from their lengthy winter’s nap. In “Lucky Number Slevin” (2006). Bruce was a famous hit man who helps a man (Josh Hartnett) ensnared between two mob bosses (Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley) trying  to get them before they murder him and his romantic love interest played by Lucy Liu. 

Willis then made a small appearance  as a retired astronaut who tries to encourage a determined farmer (Billy Bob Thornton) not to build his own space ship in “The Astronaut Farmer” (2006). Willis returned to his leading man role in the adventure “16 Blocks” (2006), playing a drunk, hard nosed New York City cop responsible for transporting a small-time criminal (Mos Def) to his grand jury testimony against a crooked cop (David Morse), only to find out the hard way that the police wants the witness murdered.

Bruce Willis made another small cameo, this round as a muscular military activist in the “Planet Terror” sequence of “Grindhouse” (2007), an anthology of two 90-minute terror films from Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez that was a revisit to the days of blood-spattered, sex crazed, features that rolled in sleazy movie house theaters in New York City. Willis then fell back to playing the tough guy in “Perfect Stranger” (2007), a uninteresting and slow thriller about an investigative reporter (Halle Berry) who poses as a temp worker at an advertising agency in order to clear up the murder of a friend connected to a authoritative ad executive (Willis). 

In the meantime, action thriller fans had a reason to rejoice with the anticipated return of hero police detective John McClane in the fourth episode of the “Die Hard” series, “Live Free or Die Hard” (2007). Returning to the trademark role he fashioned nearly fifteen years earlier, Willis played a more grown-up, less feisty John McClane entering middle age who would show the world  that once an action hero, always an action hero. 

After an uncredited appearance in the chick detective flick "Nancy Drew" (2007) starring the young Emma Roberts, Willis worked next to Michael Biehn in the action comedy "Planet Terror" (2007) about an experimental bio-weapon that is released, turning thousands into zombie-like creatures, it's up to a rag-tag group of survivors to stop the infected and those behind its release. In 2008 Bruce played Principal Kirkpatrick in the teen comedy "Assassination of a High School President" (2008), set at a Catholic high school, where the popular girl (Mischa Barton) teams up with a sophomore newspaper reporter to investigate a case of stolen SAT exams. Once the duo target their suspects, a larger conspiracy is unearthed.

Bruce Willis will next star in action film "The Surrogates" (2009), set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots, a cop (Bruce Willis) is forced to leave his home for the first time in years in order to investigate the murders of others’ surrogates. Next is the horror drama "Pinkville" (2009) about an Army general William R. Peers (Willis) who investigates the My Lai Massacre, an event in which several hundred Vietnamese civilians were killed by U.S. soldiers. Also in production is the drama "Morgan's Summit" (2009) about a late night radio host (Bruce Willis) who promotes the power of kindness and changes his ways after a brutal crime affects his life and his thoughts turn to vengeance. Finally, "The Last Full Measure" (2009), with Morgan Freeman, about an ambitious government bureaucrat who is given an unwelcome assignment that could harm his carefully orchestrated career.