Bruce Willis is undoubtedly one of the biggest and most popular movie stars in the world,
and he has been for more than three decades, now that we’ve reached the 30th anniversary
of his debut as John McClane in Die Hard.
Most recently, Willis got roasted by some of the funniest stars in Hollywood on Comedy
Central.
Despite the fact that he has made a ton of terrible movies and has said some really controversial
things in public, Willis remains one of the most popular and beloved movie stars in the
world.
Here are 10 reasons why people love Bruce Willis!
Bruce Willis has great chemistry with all his co-stars
There are very few actors that Bruce Willis has starred alongside that he hasn’t shared
great chemistry with on screen, and that’s either because he’s a great actor or because
he’s a lot of fun to act with – although it is probably some delightful combination
of both of those things.
It started off with his Moonlighting co-star Cybill Shepherd, with whom he is still friends
– their pairing is what sold the whole show to its audience.
When the third Die Hard movie, Die Hard with a Vengeance, changed the game by having a
buddy cop story, Willis had terrific chemistry and hilarious banter with his comic foil Samuel
L. Jackson.
He also had good chemistry with Joseph Gordon Levitt in the science fiction movie Looper,
in which they played the same character at different ages who travel through time.
He was also hilarious alongside his RED co-stars Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, and especially
John Malkovich.
He made a great pairing with Brad Pitt in the freaky deaky science fiction neo-noir
Twelve Monkeys, directed by Terry Gilliam.
Plus, Willis has long maintained an off-screen friendship with Edward Norton, his co-star
from both Moonrise Kingdom and the upcoming Motherless Brooklyn.
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Bruce Willis has very cool, zen, religious views
Bruce Willis might have very decisive views on politics and certainly doesn’t like to
keep quiet about them, but when it comes to religion, he is much more chilled out and
zen about his views.
He did say at one point he was a Lutheran believer – this was the faith that he grew
up with when he was a kid, and he actually attended the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church
throughout his childhood – but he has since stopped practicing and now feels more laid
back about religion.
He explained in an interview back in the ‘90s that organized religions were very important
back before we understood the planets and the weather and natural disasters.
But now, he says, it’s a dying form.
He chooses not to believe the Bible literally and thinks that the freedom to believe whatever
you want is “what makes America cool.”
Willis supports the men and women of the U.S. military
One of the most admirable things about Bruce Willis is his support for the men and women
who fight in the American armed forces.
He once sent 12,000 boxes of cookies to U.S. soldiers stationed in the Middle East and
he has portrayed military characters as heroes in many of his movies.
He also went out to Iraq to speak to some of the soldiers who were stationed out there
and to let them know that he appreciated what they were doing.
When he was over there, he saw a side to the American military that you don’t get to
see on CNN, and he used his celebrity to get the word out.
He explained that usually, all the news shows us is how many people were killed that day,
which is a huge disservice to what the soldiers are actually doing.
He says he saw them helping in various ways: getting the power turned back on, getting
hospitals open, and more.
Bruce Willis stated that to ignore this part of their service is like spitting on the young
men and women who are serving over there.
Willis is candid about the pressures of celebrity
Bruce Willis has always been very candid about the pressures that come along with being a
celebrity in the public eye.
In a 1988 interview that has recently been uncovered from when he first went from being
a TV actor to a movie star, he explained that in the beginning, people only cared about
the show, but eventually the focus switched to being about his own inner workings.
People started digging to see what made him tick, and he explains that he was unprepared
for such pressure.
He says he just had to learn how to navigate that world as he went through it.
At the end of the day, no matter how many blockbuster movies Bruce Willis might have
starred in, he is just a guy who was thrust into stardom at a relatively young age.
Bruce Willis was married to Demi Moore...
In 1987, Bruce Willis met fellow actor Demi Moore at a movie premiere, and later that
year, they got married.
The marriage would eventually end in divorce, but the fact that Willis dated her at all
is impressive.
After dropping out of high school at the age of 16 and leaving her trailer park in New
Mexico to pursue a career in acting and modeling in Los Angeles, Moore became a teen idol in
the 1980s and “the most sought-after woman in Hollywood” in the 1990s.
In the late ‘80s, Willis managed to lock her down early, and by the time that she became
a sex symbol in the last years of the 20th century, many men were let down to find out
that she was already taken.
She was a part of the Brat Pack, the group of young actors who starred in some of the
most popular movies of the ‘80s and ‘90s (including Emilio Estevez, who Moore was once
engaged to, and Molly Ringwald).
But, by the way, Moore hates being called a “brat.”
She says she finds it embarrassing, hateful, and demeaning.
She also calls out the man who coined the phrase as someone who seems jealous because
of their youth and talent.
She also debunked the implication that the group hates each other.
And speaking of potentially rocky relationships…
Willis and Moore are still on good terms after their divorce
At the time that his divorce from Demi Moore was finalized, Bruce Willis was very open
about his emotions and admitted candidly that he felt he failed as a father and a husband
by being unable to make the relationship last.
He credits fellow A-list movie star Will Smith with helping him get through that dark time
in his life.
Eventually, Willis was able to get over the fallout of his marriage with Moore and managed
to rekindle a kind of friendly relationship with her.
They never got back together and both remarried, to other people, but they are still on good
terms.
In fact, when Moore was getting remarried to Ashton Kutcher, Willis was so cool with
it and on such good terms with her that he actually went to the wedding and sat there
and watched her marry another man.
In Willis’ recent Comedy Central roast, in which Moore made a surprise appearance
to make fun of her ex-husband, one of the roasters joked that Willis’ gift at the
wedding was “a toaster and $90 million.”
But all joking aside, it takes a strong man to be able to patch things over with his ex-wife
and attend her next wedding.
Bruce Willis is the master of delivering iconic lines
Bruce Willis is one of those actors whose delivery style has made some lines of dialogue
that might otherwise be unmemorable into iconic moments in cinema history.
For starters, of course, there’s “Yippee ki yay, mother-- well, you know.
But there are a bunch more than that.
Admittedly, a lot of them came from the same franchise, like “Welcome to the party, pal!”
In the second one, he has the meta line, “I don’t fucking believe this.
Another basement.
Another elevator.
How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?”
And in the fourth one, when Justin Long’s Matt Farrell says with disbelief, “You just
killed a helicopter with a car?”, Willis deadpans, “I was out of bullets.”
The one time he worked with the director Quentin Tarantino on his Oscar-winning masterpiece,
Willis’ character Butch Coolidge says, “Zed’s dead, baby.
Zed’s dead.”
He also uttered the classic, darkly comic line, “I ain’t gonna kill him, I’m just
gonna take a foot off of him.
A man can work with one foot.”
And with his classic sarcastic wit, he once said, “Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m
all for conversation, but maybe you could just shut up for a moment.”
Bruce Willis can take a joke...
Any celebrity who agrees to take part in one of the Comedy Central Roasts – yes, even
Donald Trump – is inherently a good sport.
Trump, of course, was only a good sport because he enjoyed listening to people talking about
him and he also enjoyed bragging about how much money the roast had raised for charity.
But Willis did it because he can take a joke and laugh at himself.
He was surrounded by some of his closest friends and colleagues, including Edward Norton and
Cybill Shepherd and even his ex Demi Moore.
Joseph Gordon Levitt joked, “Bruce, you were so good in The Sixth Sense.
How did you pretend not to care while a ten-year-old acted circles around you?
And I loved the twist at the end of The Sixth Sense when Bruce goes back to making shitty
movies.”
Dennis Rodman said, “Bruce has five daughters and no sons because God hates Bruce Willis
movies.
At least Kim Jong-un [who is Rodman’s friend] is smart enough not to release his bombs.”
Shepherd joked, “The last time I saw Bruce Willis’ face was when I was shopping for
DVDs at the gas station.”
And Willis took it all in his stride.
Bruce Willis can fire them right back!
At the end of the recent roast, as with all the Comedy Central Roasts, the roastee got
a chance to get his own back by roasting everybody who had just spent an hour and a half roasting
him.
As Willis himself put it, as he took the podium for the final segment of the broadcast, “If
you are a fan of Bruce Willis movies, and I know you are, I get the shit beat out of
me for an hour and a half, and then I come back and beat everyone’s ass.
Buckle up, it’s ass whippin’ time!”
He said to his friend and co-star Edward Norton, “I love you, Ed, but you have a rep of being
hard to work with.
You’ve rubbed more people the wrong way than Harvey Weinstein.”
He said to his oft co-star and master impressionist Kevin Pollak, “Kevin Pollak has made more
money doing Schwarzenegger than his maid.”
He also joked, in the company of his ex-wife Demi Moore, “Joseph [Gordon Levitt] played
a younger me in Looper.
He couldn’t pull it off.
There is one actor who successfully played me.
It was Demi Moore.”
It’s very admirable and, well, awesome that Bruce Willis can not only take a joke but
then proceed to fire some right back.
Bruce Willis is John McClane!
All kinds of actors were considered for the part of fish out of water cop John McClane
in what is now considered to be the greatest action movie of all time.
If Frank Sinatra and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Harrison Ford and Don Johnson and Mel
Gibson and Sylvester Stallone hadn’t all turned down the role of John McClane, then
Willis might not be such a huge movie star today.
The producers came to him as a last resort, since he was only known as a TV comedy actor
back then.
However, this last resort would later go on to be called “an excellent casting choice
as a c.” Willis nails every one of McClane’s lines with humor and conviction, not least
his iconic catchphrase.
Everybody loves John McClane, because he is always swept reluctantly and unexpectedly
into dangerous situations, which is inherently humorous and sympathetic at the same time,
and by extension, they have come to love Bruce Willis, too.
An MTV survey found John McClane to be the “Greatest Movie Badass of All Time,” as
he takes western motifs and attitudes and brings them into the modern day as a wisecracking
lone wolf who is constantly up against all odds.
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