Many happy returns to Bruce Willis, who celebrates his 60th birthday today (March 19)!
Ever since finding fame in the '80s thanks to sitcom Moonlighting and explosive action movie Die Hard, Bruce has been a regular on our screens, appearing in films great, good, not-so-good and Cop Out.
With John McClane himself celebrating the big 6-0, Digital Spy staff reminisce about their favourite Bruce Willis movies, while you can vote for your personal favourite in the poll below...
Die Hard - Morgan Jeffery (TV Editor)
There's a million reasons to love 1988's Die Hard - the colourful supporting characters like Al (Reginald VelJohnson), Ellis (Hart Bochner) and Argyle (De'voreaux White), action cinema's greatest ever villain in Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), Michael Kamen's brilliantly '80s score...
But the big reason is Bruce. Sure, New York cop John McClane was a tough guy, but what Willis brought to the part in this first film was a vulnerability, a humanity - something that's been lost in subsequent sequels, which transformed McClane into a near-invulnerable superman.
In Die Hard, Bruce bleeds, he's scared - and that makes his victory over Hans all the sweeter. This is not just one of the finest examples of the action movie genre ever made, it also features a real acting performance at its core.
The Fifth Element - Hugh Armitage (Commercial Editor)
Luc Besson's visually arresting sci-fi film boasted an excellent cast (Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm) and some memorable scenes of action and literal space opera.
Willis was at his gruff and charming best as Korben Dallas, a man chosen to fight through a haze of driving tickets and petty misdemeanours to save the world.
Unbreakable - Simon Reynolds (Movies Editor)
Though The Sixth Sense, Bruce's first film with M Night Shyamalan, may have grabbed all the headlines, for my money it's Unbreakable that stands the test of time much better.
Willis plays David Dunn, a security guard who learns he's indestructible after he survives a horrific train accident. Putting his invincibility to good use, Dunn prowls the streets as a protector while simultaneously trying to rescue his crumbling home life and fend off interest from Samuel L Jackson's shady Elijah Price.
Unbreakable barely ever makes any 'best of' superhero movie lists because it wasn't derived from a comic, and that's a real shame because it's a smart genre deconstruction that's impeccably written and directed, and houses a brilliant central performance from its leading man.
Pulp Fiction - Tom Eames (Entertainment Reporter)
John Travolta wasn't the only actor who had a career revival thanks to Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. By 1994, Bruce had done quite a few duffers, from North to Hudson Hawk to Color of Night.
Pulp Fiction gave Bruce the freedom to flex his acting muscles in a way he hadn't been allowed since Die Hard. He still had the charisma and bad assery nature, but instead of just blowing things up he was given an awesome script and was involved in several of the film's most memorable moments.
While Travolta, Samuel L Jackson and Uma Thurman may get most of the attention, Bruce's performance as boxer Butch was powerful, commanding and brutal.
Looper - Justin Harp (Entertainment Reporter)
Bruce Willis engendered such goodwill with classic action films like Die Hard and The Last Boy Scout that audiences have continuously forgiven him for D-list fare like Color of Night and all of the later Die Hard movies. Looper served as a late-period comeback of sorts for the one-time king of the action movies. The neo-science fiction classic offers a truly bleak view of the future - where a scientific innovation like time travel is most-effectively used for cold-blooded murder.
Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are surprisingly credible as versions of the same assassin at two different ages. Scenes of the two coming to grips with their seemingly-unavoidable demise are just as compelling as the innovative action sequences staged by director Rian Johnson. In a career defined by his action films, Looper certainly ranks right alongside Die Hard as a high-water mark.
12 Monkeys - Mayer Nissim (News Editor)
Looper is fantastic fun, but it makes naff all sense when you really take a hard look at it. Well, no time travel movies make sense - do they? Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, heavily based on Chris Marker's 1962 photoshort La Jetée, is the exception.
Bruce Willis leads the film as James Cole, a convict from the apocalyptic near future sent back in time, not to stop a deadly virus wiping out most of mankind (having already happened, that's impossible) - but to collect information to help his own present day. But these things are never that simple.
He ends up in an asylum, meets and falls for Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe) and also crosses paths with Jeffrey Goines, Brad Pitt in a proto-Tyler Durden performance that rightly won him an Oscar nod. Through Cole's eyes we explore themes of dreams, reality and memory, sanity and madness, all wrapped up in a tense sci-fi thriller as watchable and intelligent as any the decade had to offer.
Death Becomes Her - Naomi Gordon (Entertainment Reporter)
A suitably strong male lead was required to match Death Becomes Her's charismatic female counterparts, Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn - even if one had a giant hole through her torso and the other a nasty neck wound from a 'fall' down a flight of stairs.
Luckily, a pre-shaved headed Bruce Willis was the actor to step up and pull off the role of renowned plastic surgeon-turned-downtrodden-and-beleaguered reconstructive mortician Ernest - who would like to think he was earnest by nature too... despite his profession, the white tuxedo, leaving former fiancée Helen (Hawn) for her ex-best friend Madeline (Streep), and then planning murder.
While Hawn and Streep's chemistry and comedic performances arguably steal Robert Zemeckis's (Academy Award-winning) black comedy fantasy, Willis plays the pair off with humour and manages to temporarily shake his Die Hard action man persona to play a dowdy and crumpled alcoholic with conviction.
We almost develop empathy for Ernest, particularly when he turns down a naked Isabella Rossellini, refuses to drink the magical potion and crashes through her giant stained-glass window in protest. And Willis evolves into our moral compass - he refuses to allow vanity or fear of old age take control of his decisions and understands that immortality isn't as wondrous as it may seem.
What's your favourite Bruce Willis movie? Vote in the poll and leave your comments in the space below!
Movies Editor
Simon has worked as a journalist for more than a decade, writing on staff and freelance for Hearst, Dennis, Future and Autovia titles before joining Cision in 2022.
