American retired actor and singer Walter Bruce Willis was born 70 years ago in Idar-Oberstein, West Germany, is married and has 5 children.
When Bruce was just 2 years old, his dad who was an American soldier, was discharged from the military and returned to the US together with his family. Bruce attended a public high school where he joined its drama club and graduated in 1973. He then worked as a security guard and afterwards as a private investigator. Afterwards, Bruce enrolled in a university’s drama programme but after some time decided to leave to move to New York where he worked in various nightclubs as a bartender.
In the early 80s, he took part in a few movies but became an established comedic actor when between 1985 and 1989 he starred alongside actress Cybill Shepherd in the drama-comedy series ‘Moonlighting’, in which he interpreted the character of private detective David Addison Jr. Bruce’s popularity continued to arise became a famous movie star with the films ‘Die Hard’, ‘Die Hard 2’ and ‘Die Hard with a Vengeance’, released in 1988, 1990 and 1995 respectively.
At the beginning of the 90s, however, Bruce’s career went a bit downhill after starring in some unsuccessful films like ‘The Bonfire of Vanities’ and ‘Hudson Hawk’ but recuperated when he was cast in ‘The Last Boy Scout’ and ‘String Distance’. It did decline again with ‘The Color of the Night’ but got a good boost with his interpretation in the movie ‘Pulp Fiction’, acting also John Travolta. This was followed by 2 leading roles in ‘Twelve Monkeys’ and ‘The Fifth Element’. After a few more film flops, Willis starred in the psychological thriller ‘The Sixth Sense’.
In the last 22 years until his retirement, Bruce continued acting in numerous films and has starred in over 80 movies, also voicing animated movie characters and acting as producer/executive producer. Some of these include: ‘The Whole Nine Yards’, ‘Tears of the Sun’, ‘Alpha Dog’, ‘Live Free or Die Hard’, ‘Red’, ‘Fire with Fire’, ‘A Good Day to Die Hard’, ’10 Minutes Gone’, ‘Hard Kill’, ‘A Day to Die’ and ‘Assassin’. In addition, he has also guest appeared in episodes of various sitcoms like ‘Friends’ and ‘Touching Evil’.
Apart from acting, during the 80s, Bruce released 2 studio albums and 7 singles. The 1986 single ‘Respect Yourself’ placed 5th on the US charts and 7th on the UK charts.
During his long career, Willis won several awards including 3 Blockbuster Entertainment, a Golden Globe and 2 Primetime Emmy. In 2006, he was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in 2011 was inducted in the New Jersey Hall of Fame, amongst other honours.
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