Childhood
Walter Bruce Willis was born on a military base in Idar-Oberstein (former West Germany), on March 19, 1955. His father David was a welder and factory worker who took the Willis family back to New Jersey after being discharged from the military in 1957.
Bruce spent his childhood in New Jersey with his three younger siblings, sister Flo, and brothers David (producer) and Robert (died at age 42 of pancreatic cancer).
Bruce Willis attended the Penns Grove High School in Penns Grove, New Jersey, where he became the student council president and was named the student with the "Most School Spirit." Though he was an active and outgoing teenager, Bruce suffered from a severe stuttering problem that could hinder him performing on stage.
Though a good student, he was suspended for three months in his senior year for taking part in what he later described as "the annual riot".
The scar on his right shoulder is from surgery due to complications from a broken arm when he was 17.
Interested in theater, Bruce studied drama at the Montclair State College in Montclair, New Jersey, where he received his honorary doctorate.
Career
Rather than enrolling for a college degree, Willis took up the job of transporting work crews at the Du Pont factory.
Bruce waited tables and tended bar for a living until he began to get roles in plays.
Bruce was seen tending bar in New York by a casting director who liked his personality & needed a bartender for a small movie role.
After countless auditions, Bruce landed a role in the play Heaven and Earth in 1977, which motivated him to quit school and move to Hell's Kitchen to pursue an acting career. Soon he was cast in off-Broadway plays and television commercials.His acting breakthrough came in 1984 when he replaced the lead in Sam Shepard's hit play Fool for Love, a run which lasted for 100 performances off-Broadway.
After gaining two unaccredited roles in the big screen films The First Deadly Sin (1980) and The Verdict (1982), Bruce received his first breakout role of wise guy detective David Addison, costarring with actress Cybill Shepherd, in the ABC huge hit mystery-comedy series Moonlighting. From 1985 to 1989, Bruce played the role and his impressive acting work nabbed him an Emmy and Golden Globe Award in 1987. The series also helped Bruce receive more casting offers.
He used his breaks from Moonlighting to star in two movies by Blake Edwards (famed Pink Panther director). First was Blind Date, with Kim Basinger, an excellent slapstick caper that was outrageously panned.
Then came Sunset, the tale of two ageing cowboys solving a crime in Hollywood.
After an unsuccessful slapstick comedy Blind Date, Willis found his trademark role in 1988; detective John McClane in the actioner, Die Hard. He then lent his voice to the sleeper comedy Look Who's Talking a year later.
In 1990, Willis starred in Die Hard 2: Die Harder, the number two box office hit of the summer, then starred in Brian De Palma's Bonfire of the Vanities opposite Tom Hanks. He teamed up with Demi Moore and Glenne Headley in the disturbing psychological drama Mortal Thoughts; as a cat burglar in the action-adventure comedy Hudson Hawk; and as gangster Bo Weinberg in Billy Bathgate, Willis followed these roles with The Last Boy Scout, playing a private detective who teams up with an ex-football player to solve a murder case.
Bruce netted lead roles in such films as The Jackal (1997, costarring Richard Gere, Diane Venora and legend Sidney Poitier), Mercury Rising (1998), and most notably in Michael Bay 's smash sci-fi action hit Armageddon (1998).
With his career flourishing, Willis starred in several movies like playing invincible David Dunn in M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable (2000, with Robin Wright-Penn and Samuel L. Jackson), starring in Barry Levinson's Bandits (2001, opposite Billy Bob Thornton and Cate Blanchette), MGM's thriller-drama Hart's War (2002, alongside Colin Farrell), Grand Champion (2002), and Tears of the Sun (2003).
