Besides his role as John McClane in the enduring “Die Hard” franchise, Willis’s second most popular film appearance could arguably be in M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Sixth Sense.” Hitting theaters in 1999, the hauntingly suspenseful film about a boy who can see ghosts gave Willis the chance to broaden his acting chops and venture outside of the shoot-em-up action genre. But he might not have ever played the part of psychologist Malcolm Crowe if he hadn’t owed the Disney studio, like, big time.
- However, Willis later pulled out of his deal with Seagrams when he realized that he had a problem.
- It was the start of a romance that carried them for 20 years together and yielded three children, but it all ended in 2000, according to US Magazine.
- Stars used in this formula are compensated considerably but are never used substantially in those films, according to Vanity Fair.
- As a singer, Willis released his debut album, The Return of Bruno, in 1987, followed by two more albums in 1989 and 2001.
- And of course, his blockbuster his, Die Hard, stands out in his career as an actor.
- During a 2013 interview with GQ, Willis revealed that he was comfortable drinking again once he realized he wasn’t going to run himself “off the pier of life with alcohol,” in his own words.
He played a small but memorable role in “Pulp Fiction,” which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and won the Palm D’Or at Cannes, according to its IMDb awards page. Night Shyamalan’s “The Sixth Sense,” which garnered six Oscar nominations (via IMDb). That’s not to mention his appearances in the critically acclaimed movies “12 Monkeys” and “Moonrise Kingdom,” according to IMDb. With the March 30 announcement of his retirement, his career seems to have been unfairly cut short, even at his ripe-old age of 67. Perhaps it’s because he had far grander expectations for the end of his career than what he was dealt. In a 2013 interview with GQ, he voiced a desire to retire with “the same grace” as did Cary Grant.
And before that, before he got his break in Moonlighting, he was a bartender on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. But he eventually quit the high paying gig and alcohol altogether when he decided to find sober living in 1988. “I had been sober for a while,” he said in his https://sober-home.org/ 2013 interview with GQ Magazine, “But once I realized that I wasn’t gonna run myself off the pier of life with alcohol, drinking vodka out of the bottle every day,” he quit. While Bruce Willis had enjoyed a successful film career, he didn’t lose his love for the theater.
Perry and Willis co-starred in the 2000 crime comedy “The Whole Nine Yards,” during which the two became fast friends. As the story goes, Perry bet Willis that the film would be a box office hit, and to their surprise, the movie raked in a worldwide total of $106 million. As a result of losing the bet, Willis had to guest star on “Friends” without pay. Once Willis found fame for his starring role in “Moonlighting,” he decided to try his hand at other performing arts — namely, music. The result was an album released in 1987, “The Return of Bruno,” in which Willis sang and played harmonica alongside some pretty impressive recording artists (via Diffuser). The name “Bruno” came from an alter ego invented by Willis, called Bruno Radolini.
The negative connotation to this phrase comes from the fact that family, friends, and co-workers must still have to bear the arrogance and destructive behavior of a recovering alcoholic. Perhaps for this reason, the headlines that Willis was drinking again spread across the Internet. Willis, 67, who achieved initial fame for the 1980s comedy-drama TV series, Moonlighting, before he became the tough-guy action hero who shouted “Yippee Ki Yay” in five Die Hard films, has appeared in about 100 films across his four-decade career. This was evident to those near Willis during the final years of his career. According to The Los Angeles Times, nearly 20 people on set with Willis suspected his mental decline. He allegedly misfired a gun loaded with blanks on the set of “Hard Kill.” His agents at the Creative Artists Agency made sure his shooting times on films were restricted to two days, and the actor often limited his time to four hours.
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A detective reported that Willis, who appeared to be intoxicated, shouted at the officers to leave his home. When they refused, Willis allegedly attempted to strike one marijuana withdrawal timeline of the officers. He was restrained and handcuffed by police, injuring himself in the process thanks to a broken clavicle that he had suffered previously while skiing.
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Rumer doesn’t blame her upbringing or her parents’ fame for her struggles, but both Bruce and Demi Moore have had issues with sobriety. In her book “Inside Out,” Moore wrote about an incident in which she had a seizure after using nitrous and synthetic cannabis at a party, frightening Rumer, per Today. Rumer and her sisters cut off communication with their mother for three years after the incident. Watching her mother relapse into drug abuse was harrowing for Rumer, partly because it reminded her of her own issues. Armstrong said in his book “Revenge of the Nerd” that Willis once divulged a mistake in his early relationship with Shepherd, which Armstrong interpreted as a sexual liaison.
Bruce Willis
Aphasia generally affects how people speak and understand language, but the severity of it varies. Damage to the temporal lobe in the brain affects the ability to understand speech; additional damage to the frontal lobe affects the ability to speak. It’s unclear to what extent Willis is affected, but as expert Swathi Kiran writes in The Independent, most people affected by aphasia have trouble recalling words. He already had stage experience during the early years of his career and a few productions throughout — including “True West” — but this marked his first time on the Great White Way, according to the BBC.
Willis only has seven minutes of screen time in “Hard Kill” (2020), nine minutes in “Extraction” (2015), and 10 minutes in “Survive the Night” (2020). Following a trend Steven Seagal once trailblazed, Willis’ last several movies have been deliberately awful, but they’ve earned him a huge payday, since producers use his name and image to make a buck in international markets, according to Vanity Fair. Willis was usually paid $2 million for two days of work, according to The LA Times. During a 2013 interview with GQ, Willis revealed that he was comfortable drinking again once he realized he wasn’t going to run himself “off the pier of life with alcohol,” in his own words.