Feature
Being a dad is what I do best
Bruce Willis believes no amount of screen success could compare to the joy his children bring him.
IT’S HARD
to believe that it’s two decades since Bruce Willis became an overnight sensation as a smooth-talking private eye on TV’s
Moonlighting. Though action pictures like Die Hard and Armageddon made him a major movie star, his last two films were big disappointments.
Now, Bruce has returned to his first love, comedy, with the sequel to the surprise 2000 hit
The Whole Nine Yards. And despite appearing in three Die Hard movies (and counting), Bruce confesses he’s not usually a fan of sequels.
“Sequels aren’t new movies, just another chapter of a movie you’ve already seen. I have a little distaste for them based on how much TV I did. But
The
Whole Nine Yards did well financially and got a good response. The cast had such a great time, we all became friends and hung out with each other, so working together again seemed like a good idea.”
Indeed, he and co-star Matthew Perry got along so well the first time round that Bruce took him up on his offer to join him on
Friends. As Jennifer Aniston’s much older love interest (not much research needed for that role), Bruce earned another Emmy to bookend the one he won for
Moonlighting. Now, four years on, he’s reunited with Perry, Amanda Peet
(Something’s Gotta Give) and Natasha Henstridge (She Spies) for more merriment.
Taking a break from filming his new movie, Hostage, Bruce looks different from hit man Jimmy ‘the Tulip’ Tudecki in
The Whole Ten Yards.
The story picks up where the first film ended as he explains.
“Jimmy retired to Mexico with his new wife (Peet), and his old pal Oz (Perry) shows up in need of help — his wife (Henstridge), who is Jimmy’s ex, has been kidnapped. Unlike the first film, we winged it on this one and a lot of what happened was improvisation.”
In particular, Bruce is pleased with the work of his youngest daughter, Tallulah, who comes close to stealing the movie. All three of his girls were in the original but only 10-year-old Tallulah returned for this one.
“Being a dad is the thing I do best,” he says. “I’m probably a better father than I am at anything else I do. I would have nine more daughters right now if I could. I love them so much.
“Everything else seems stupid after you have kids. All the things you worried about, all the things that seemed important just seem so insignificant compared to the need of this little, helpless infant in your arms. I’ve always been really proud of the fact that I’m a dad.”
He continues, “I never wanted to be around kids before I had one. And then I just had an epiphany when I held my oldest daughter, Scout (now 15), in my arms. People tell you, ‘Oh, your life is going to change once you have kids’ and from the tone of their voice, it’s like a bad thing, like you’re going to be losing something. But I gained the world. I have so much more love in my life right now, love that I give and receive. It’s amazing.”
Since he and Demi Moore split five years ago, both of them have cut back on their work so they can spend more time with their daughters.
“Our kids are the number one thing in our lives,” Bruce explains. “We raise our children together and we’re still good friends. I know that’s a rare thing but that just comes from putting the kids first. You see people split up and there’s a lot of acrimony and resentment but if you have kids you’ve got to find a way to set that aside. Believe me, I’m not saying it is easy. When things ended, it certainly wasn’t easy. It was very hard. But I feel very fortunate that Demi and I stayed friends. She lives right across the street from me (in Hailey, Idaho). We couldn’t have that arrangement and not be friends.”
Demi is currently dating 26-year-old model and actor Ashton Kutcher while Bruce recently split from former
Baywatch beauty Brooke Burns. Bruce hasn’t yet commented on the break-up.
He’s a little more open with his thoughts on his own daughters starting to date however. “The only thing I can do is tell my girls the truth,” he says. “Like, here’s what a 16-year-old boy is thinking! But there comes a point when you have to start letting go and allow them the freedom to make mistakes. That’s the only way you learn. I have learned more from failure than I’ve ever learned from success.”
And what failures he has had. After the surprise success of the first Die Hard in 1988, Bruce was offered what seemed like every script in Hollywood.
He ended up picking the worst ones, starring in two of the biggest flops of the early ’90s —
Bonfire Of The Vanities and Hudson Hawk. But Bruce bounced back with rave reviews in
Pulp Fiction.
Looking back, he admits to knowing those films were ill-fated even as they were filming them but he doesn’t try to blame others.
“I take responsibility for the roles I’ve picked. Sometimes I’ve made mistakes. I’ve tried to do different things, and you don’t always hit a homerun. I just try to stay interested in my work.”
To this end, he has forged a career path combining big budget blockbusters like
Armageddon and, yes, the Die Hards, with mainstream comedies, dramas and more offbeat projects like
The Fifth Element and 12 Monkeys. So, what will he look for when choosing his next role?
“When I pick a role, I don’t scheme for the next Academy Award nomination,” he says. “I just pick what I think will be fun to do. The voice I have always listened to is my own, for good or bad. I’ve always had confidence. Before I was famous, that confidence got me into trouble. After I got famous, it just got me into more trouble.”
Indeed. One of Hollywood’s more notorious bad boys in the ’80s and ’90s, Bruce admits to having mellowed in recent years.
“I really don’t know the Bruce Willis I read about in the papers. Whether it is Bruce the troublemaker or Bruce the movie star, it has very little to do with who I am as a man or as a father. I put very little stock in the illusion of fame. That’s how I’ve learned to cope. I try to distance myself from the fame. I work every day at not taking my fame seriously. I have a great group of friends who help me do this. I really am just a regular guy who has an incredibly blessed life.”
These blessings, like making $25 million a movie, make up for the loss of privacy. “People pick apart my trash,” Bruce continues. “They wait outside my hotel rooms. They hide in my bushes. But I deal with it because I love making movies. I love the acting. When I started out, I was just a kid playing myself. My character on
Moonlighting was me. And then I spent the next 15 years trying to reinvent myself, trying to do new things.”
Understandably, he expresses some reservations about a fourth instalment of
Die Hard.
“I love action movies and I’m always looking for a different take on them so I would do
Die Hard IV if the script was right. But, the Die Hard trilogy was based on terrorism and it’s difficult in today’s world to do stories that fictionally portray terrorism.”
Just a year shy of 50, Bruce has no time for regrets.
“How do you know the thing you’re regretting isn’t the thing that led you to something great?” he sighs. “I’ve lost a couple of friends in freak accidents. It makes you realise how fragile life is, how quickly it can be taken away. And every day I say to myself, ‘Am I living my life? Am I enjoying my life today?’ Because this is not a rehearsal. This is it!”
By Paul Sheehan/Planet Syndication
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