The Amazing Life and Success Story of Bruce Willis Who Grew From a Feeble Stutterer Into One of the Coolest Actors in the World

It seems incredible today, but at the beginning of his career, Bruce Willis wasn’t even considered an action hero, unlike his colleagues, such as Schwarzenegger and Stallone. But his most famous role is John McClane, a brave police officer with a great sense of humor.

On March 30, the actor’s daughter Rumer Willis made an announcement that her father had quit his career due to health issues. We at CHEERY want to show our support for Bruce Willis and tell the story of his not-so-simple life.

Childhood and youth

• Walter Bruce Willis was born in Idar-Oberstein, West Germany, on March 19, 1955. His father David Willis was an American soldier serving there. 2 years later, he moved his family to his hometown of Carneys Point, New Jersey. Bruce’s mother Marlene worked in a bank, and his father was a welder, master mechanic, and factory worker.
• The future action movie star has a young sister, Florence, and a brother, David. He had another brother, Robert, who died in 2001 due to a serious disease.
• Bruce’s childhood wasn’t easy, to say the least. At the age of 6, he started stuttering, and his classmates nicknamed him “Buck-Buck”. “There was a lot of bullying in my life, and I had to fight my way out,” he recalled during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “Kids get mean.”

• But Bruce didn’t shut down and decided to join a drama class. He soon noticed that when playing different characters on stage, he was better at controlling his stuttering. And later, when he was studying at Montclair State University, he worked with speech therapists and got rid of his stuttering.
• “The hardest thing I remember was being a kid stuttering. My advice to the people in this room is to never let anyone make you feel like an outcast because you will never be an outcast,” he said while tearing up at the American Institute for Stuttering annual gala.
• After finishing middle school in 1973, Bruce Willis worked as a guard at the Salem Nuclear Power Plant, he was a driver, and he even worked as a private investigator (he would play this role in the comedy-drama Moonlighting). At the beginning of the 1980s, Bruce moved to New York, where he appeared as an extra in a few movies.

Career on TV and in cinema

• The actor became somewhat popular in 1985, after the release of the TV series Moonlighting. He played David Addison jr. He was chosen among 3,000 other actors. He won an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award. He got many advertising offers, one of which earned him from 5 to 7 million dollars in 2 years.

• In the following years, Bruce was on TV and in several films, but he was an ordinary actor until the release of Die Hard in 1988. It was this film that turned Bruce into a first-class action movie hero.

• What’s interesting is that Die Hard was originally planned as a sequel to Commando (1985) where Schwarzenegger was supposed to play the main role. But he turned the offer down. The creators also invited other famous actors, such as Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, and Don Johnson, but they all turned the role down for various reasons.
• In the end, the part of John McClane was given to TV series actor Bruce Willis. The script was rewritten, and the film got a new name.

• By the way, Bruce Willis became partially deaf during the production of Die Hard. Since then, he keeps asking people to repeat what they’ve said.
• And, on the set of Tears of the Sun, Willis got a head injury. One year later, he sued the production studio. The suit claimed that Willis had suffered “extreme mental, physical, and emotional pain” and needed medical help on the set as a result.
• Despite the doubts of the producers, Die Hard grossed a lot of money and had very good reviews. Bruce Willis got many more movie offers. But he had both very good and very bad career choices.
• The 1990s and the 2000s gave us such amazing films as Pulp Fiction, four Die Hard sequels, The Fifth Element, Armageddon, The Sixth Sense, The Whole Nine Yards, and Sin City.

• Willis turned down the iconic role in Ghost, where Patrick Swayze ended up getting the main role. It was because Bruce didn’t quite understand the script.
• He loves singing which he does in his films. He keeps humming some tunes or even plays the harmonica in some of them.
• In 1987, the actor recorded an RnB music album. The song “Respect Yourself” even ranked 5th in Billboard magazine. In Great Britain, “Under the Boardwalk” was in second place on the charts. Just listen to how well he sings.

Family: the love of his life and his children

• In 1987, at the premiere of Stakeout Bruce Willis met actress Demi Moore. At the time, she was in a relationship with her fiancé, actor Emilio Estevez. They soon broke up. And a bit later, Bruce and Demi went on a trip to Las Vegas, where the actor proposed to Demi.
• Demi Moore wrote in her autobiography, “In Las Vegas, in one of the establishments, Bruce suddenly said, ’I think we should get married.’ We’d been joking about it on the flight there, but suddenly it didn’t seem like he was kidding.” One month later, in November 1987, Demi and Bruce got married, and during the next six years of marriage, they had three beautiful daughters Rumer, Scout, and Tallulah.

• At first sight, Bruce and Demi seemed like a perfect family. But in July 1998, Bruce and Demi said they were getting divorced. And, despite all the attempts to fix the relationship, they separated in 2000. Nevertheless, after the divorce, they remained good friends and raised their daughters together. Bruce even attended the wedding of Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher.
• Soon after the divorce, Bruce said to Rolling Stone: “We have three children whom we will continue to raise together, and we’re probably as close now as we ever were. We realize we have a lifelong commitment to our kids. Our friendship continues.”
• In 2004, the actor dated model Brooke Burns, and they got engaged, but ten months later, they broke up.

• In 2007, the actor met model Emma Heming, who is 21 years younger than him. Heming said in one of her interviews, “When we first met, I was surprised at how charming and how funny he was — and extremely handsome. That was my first thought of you.” They got married in 2009. In the photo below, you can see how moving that moment was for both of them.

• In 2012, they had a daughter named Mabel Ray, and in 2014, they had another daughter — Evelyn Penn.

• In March 2019, Bruce and Heming celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary in a sweet ceremony. Heming wrote on her Instagram, “We said, we do, again, 10 years later.”.

• This is what the actor says about his wife Emma, “She’s brought me her incredible spirit and class and beauty and love. Before I met Emma, I was very pessimistic about finding that special woman whom I would want to spend my life with. I thought it would be difficult for someone like me who is well known to find a woman who didn’t have an agenda and just wanted to be with me because they loved me, pure and simple.
  With Emma, I knew I had found a woman who didn’t need or want anything from me other than for us to be together and be happy.”.

• Both his ex- and his current wives get along very well with each other and often have family meetings, sharing photos online.
• When talking about the relationships in their families, Bruce explained, “It’s generated a lot of interest because everyone can understand resentment and envy in the breakup of a marriage, but they don’t understand how I can get along with my ex like that. Demi and I made a choice to put the kids first, and we’re really lucky that it turns out we all have fun together.”

• Bruce’s daughters from his first marriage have also chosen lives in the show business. Rumer is an actress, she was in films such as Hostage, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and also in TV series like 90210, and Empire. She also won the 20th season of the dance competition television series Dancing with the Stars. Tallulah is also an actress and visual artist, and Scout sings and acts on stage.

• Bruce Willis has said many times that there’s nothing more important than his family and his daughters. In a 2013 interview, he said, “I don’t have much to get upset about in life. Your kids need your love and attention and being able to devote myself to them is very fulfilling. As I get older, spending time with my daughters makes things much easier. You learn to put your ego aside.”

• He also said that deep down, he’s soft. “I’ve never been a strict father. I was very protective of them, but deep down I’m a softie. Sometimes I would try to adopt the John McClane persona when a guy would come to the house to take Rumer out on a date. But then she would just push me aside and give me this stern look.
  My girls have never had a problem telling me what they think or when they think I’m doing the wrong thing. They would even tell me how to dress or would complain if I wore something they hated. But honestly, I love that!”

Career decline and its end

• In the 2010s, the actor started appearing in small-budget films, producers often used his name in press releases and movie posters. Bruce had some very small roles in blockbusters. And even though the roles were small, he was paid 2 million dollars for 2 days’ work.

• In 2015, Willis debuted on Broadway in Stephen King’s Misery. His performance was largely panned by critics, who called it “vacant” and “inert”.

• In the past several years, Bruce Willis appeared in films that didn’t even make it to the big screen. They went straight to online services. Most of them were terrible. Although he had very small roles, he looked lost on set and he didn’t understand what he was doing there. He often forgot his lines and had to wear an earpiece to listen to hints.
• The scriptwriter of one of the films (Out of Death, 2021) even had to shrink down Bruce Willis’ lines. So all his scenes were shot in only one day.

• Everyone close to the actor realized that he had signs of mental illness. And it was on March 30, 2022, when Bruce’s daughter Rumer said on her Instagram account that her 67-year-old father was diagnosed with aphasia. This is why he retired, finishing his 42-year acting career.
• Aphasia affects speaking skills, the ability to memorize words, speak and understand speech. A person’s intelligence is not affected. People with aphasia understand their conditions and can even make important decisions.

• In 2021, Bruce Willis took part in 8 movies. The Golden Raspberry Awards even had a new category “Worst Performance by Bruce Willis in 2021”. The category was later rescinded after he announced his retirement due to aphasia.

We hope Bruce Willis lives for many more years in good health. Even though he won’t have any new roles, he can still appear on red carpets and on social media.

What is your favorite Bruce Willis film?