BRUCE WILLIS

Bruce Willis was born Walter Bruce Willis in Idar-Oberstein, West Germany in 1955 (his father was an American soldier stationed there, and his mother was German), but he grew up in New Jersey. Like many other actors, Willis had a speech disability as a child, and speech therapy helped, as did performing on the stage while a student in high school. After a series of odd jobs, he went to college for drama, but quit in his junior year and moved to New York City, where he got a few small parts. He moved to Hollywood in 1987, where he got a part in an episode of Miami Vice, and then he was cast as the lead in the Glenn Gordon Caron TV series, Moonlighting, opposite Cybill Shepherd. I remember well when this show first aired, and everyone was very taken with Willis! He had a completely "fresh" quality that is rarely seen among actors, and the part of wiseguy would-be detective David Addison was perfect for him. His success on that show led to a starring role in Blind Date, opposite Kim Basinger, and though the movie wasn't very good, Willis again got good reviews. In 1988, he starred in Die Hard as John McClane, which was a huge critical and commercial success, and which has led to three sequels. Moonlighting went off the air in 1989. That year Willis was the voice of "Mikey" in Look Who's Talking, which did quite well. Willis then made some poor film choices, including the disastrous Hudson Hawk. But he bounced back with a major success in Pulp Fiction in 1994 and in The Sixth Sense in 1999. His career has been very uneven, with some real hits, and some real misses! Willis met Demi Moore in 1987 and they had three daughters, and then divorced in 2000. He married 23 year younger Emma Heming in 2009 (and Moore married 15 year younger Ashton Kutcher in 2005).