Bruce Willis, who turned 70 on March 19, built a truly remarkable—and by no means one-dimensional—career with a level of skill and intelligence that often went unappreciated in the shadow of his loud box office successes. His long-term strategy only becomes clear in hindsight, when we look back and take stock of who an actor really was and what they accomplished. Willis’s retirement from acting in 2022, following a diagnosis of aphasia and later frontotemporal dementia, gave his still-massive fanbase a chance to rediscover and reappraise his talents.
Samuel L. Jackson still remembers the invaluable career advice Bruce Willis gave him while filming Die Hard with a Vengeance in 1994. “He told me: ‘Hopefully you’ll find a character that—even if you do some bad movies that don’t make money—you can always return to, one that everyone loves. Arnold has the Terminator. Sylvester has Rocky and Rambo. I’ve got John McClane.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, okay.’ I didn’t even realize it until I got the role of Nick Fury—and signed a nine-picture deal to play him—that I was like, ‘Oh, I’m doing what Bruce said. I’ve got the character.’” Still, Bruce Willis was far more than just the iconic John McClane.
Willis himself believed that great work often takes time to reveal itself. “Often it’s only 10 or 15 years later that you look back on a film and say: ‘That movie really holds up. That one, not so much.’” His action films certainly fall into the former category: alongside the legendary Die Hard franchise, we can look to Armageddon, The Last Boy Scout, or The Fifth Element—all still pop culture staples, still revisited and celebrated. Here, we highlight five of his roles—beyond the action hero…
One of Quentin Tarantino’s greatest strengths is his ability to unearth untapped potential in established or even fading stars. While Pulp Fiction (1994) is often remembered as John Travolta’s big comeback, it was just as transformative for Willis, who had never before played such a quiet, restrained character on screen. In the film’s central storyline, Willis plays Butch, a boxer who goes on the run from mobsters after refusing to throw a fight. His arc culminates in a violent showdown, of course—but in his gentle scenes with girlfriend Fabienne (Maria de Medeiros), we see a softness in Willis that he rarely had the chance to show before.
Even in his toughest roles, Willis could imbue his characters with vulnerability—and that vulnerability only deepened with age. In Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys (1995), a remake of Chris Marker’s classic short film La Jetée, Willis plays James Cole, a prisoner of a post-apocalyptic future who is sent back in time to gather information about a virus that wiped out most of humanity. There he meets psychiatrist Kathryn Railly (Madeline Stowe), who at first believes he’s delusional. The film is as much about Cole’s quest for answers as it is about his personal journey. A visitor from a future with no hope, Cole gradually awakens to the possibility of life—at least in the fleeting moments when he’s not fighting to survive or questioning his own sanity. It’s perhaps Willis’s most intense and heartbreaking performance—lightyears away from John McClane. Rather than taking fate into his own hands, Cole realizes he is a prisoner of fate—perhaps like all of us.
In M. Night Shyamalan’s breakout hit The Sixth Sense (1999), Willis plays a child psychologist. By now, everyone knows the film’s famous twist, but that twist alone isn’t what makes it a classic. Matching Shyamalan’s patient storytelling rhythm, Willis brings extraordinary sensitivity to his scenes with the fragile boy Cole Sear (played by Haley Joel Osment), who claims he can see dead people. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards.
Just a year later, Unbreakable (2000) took audiences by surprise. Though it also had a twist, Shyamalan chose not to follow The Sixth Sense with another supernatural thriller, but instead with a slowly unfolding superhero origin story. Willis plays David Dunn, a former high school football star turned security guard, and the sole survivor of a horrific train crash. Guided by comic book store owner Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), David comes to realize he may be nearly indestructible. As in The Sixth Sense, Willis’s performance syncs perfectly with Shyamalan’s measured, deliberate tone. At the core of David’s character is hesitation—will he accept his destiny and take on the mantle of hero? It all culminates in a wordless moment of recognition, as David silently confirms to his son, Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark), that yes, he is the mysterious vigilante the newspapers have been writing about. It’s one of the finest moments in Willis’s career.
Perhaps Moonrise Kingdom (2012) by Wes Anderson best shows where Willis’s career might have headed, had illness not forced him to step away. Here, he plays a kind-hearted island police captain tasked with rescuing a runaway couple. Once again, he plays a man of few words, but that doesn’t stop him from being at the center of the film’s most touching moments.