20 Questions: Bruce Willis

Possessed of Hollywood's most famous smirk, Bruce Willis has acted in movies of every genre, starring in some of the biggest box office hits ("Die Hard," "Die Harder," "Die Hard With a Vengeance") and appearing in a range of quieter movies such as "Nobody's Fool," for which he was widely praised by critics. This summer, he's saving the world once again in "Armageddon," and he'll next star in a movie he's producing based on Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions."

Willis is from Carneys Point, New Jersey, where his father was a welder. He began acting in high school and studied theater at Montclair State College. He moved to New York to pursue acting, supporting himself by bartending. In 1984, he got the lead in an off-Broadway production of Sam Shephard's "Fool for Love," which led to an audition for a TV pilot starring Cybill Shepherd. The show, "Moonlighting," became a huge hit.

Willis married Demi Moore in 1987, and they have three daughters, Rumer, Scout and Tallulah. In addition they are active shareholders (with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone) in Planet Hollywood, where Willis occasionally indulges another passion: playing rock and roll. When not working, Willis moves among homes on each coast and a spread in Idaho. He says he spends as much time as he can with his children. "That's a gift I'm fortunate enough to be able to give my kids--me. My time," he told Playboy.

Contributing Editor David Sheff first met with Willis for a "Playboy Interview" in 1996. This time, Sheff reports, Willis instantly put him on the defensive. "Bruce is one of the few Hollywood actors whose offscreen presence is as imposing as the one he has in movies. As I turned on the tape recorder, he issued a challenge. 'I've done so many fucking interviews about the same fucking things,' he said. 'I want you to be the guy who gets at something the other nincompoops don't get at.' It was the type of line Hollywood scriptwriters have fed him for years, and he delivered it with the type of menace only he can get away with."

1

Playboy: What do you see in your children as an unfortunate inheritance from you? Have they ever given you back one of your smirks?

Willis: My middle daughter has my smirk. It's a genetic thing; there's no other explanation. Children of famous people are saddled with great responsibility. It's a problem. People watch their every move. We are trying to let our children be children as long as they can.

2

Playboy: What is your response when they try one of your lines on you--say, "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker"?

Willis: Hasn't happened. The kids see only the PG movies we do. If they hear about the others from someone, I just tell them that this is what mommy and daddy do for a living. It's not real life, it's just a job. We are fortunate to have the job, but it's just a job.

3

Playboy: In your movies, you often play the underdog who gets revenge, saving airports, buildings and humanity. What real-life underdogs do you admire?

Willis: I look up to people who, in the face of overwhelming odds, tighten their belts and say, "I will try as hard as I can to do the right thing." Doing the right thing is at the top of my list. That's different from the guys in the movies. They're archetypes. The underdog facing overwhelming odds isn't something I created. That has existed since the Thirties, since James Cagney, since Humphrey Bogart, since Henry Fonda, since Robert De Niro.

4

Playboy: As a Republican who campaigned for George Bush, are you amused by the sex scandals surrounding Clinton?

Willis: No, All I want is for the president of the United States to come clean. And to have his friends come clean. He should have Susan McDougal tell the truth instead of saying, "I will go to jail rather than tell the truth." I would have much more respect for her if she told the truth. We have put a price on knowledge gained privately. Somewhere in the world right now, some young person is saying, "I don't have a good job yet, but I hope to work with someone famous so I can rat them out and earn $100,000." It's pathetic. I have no understanding why this guy remains president. I don't care if Bill Clinton fucks a million women. If he's president of the United States, there are certain rules he has to follow. A lot of people in this country feel the same way. His integrity is in question. The public is sick of it. That's why people don't vote. Clinton was elected by a lesser margin than Dukakis lost by. No one gives a fuck anymore.

5

Playboy: You once told us that you could never run for political office because of your checkered past--"unless they start grading on a curve." What will life be like when we have political leaders without checkered pasts?

Willis: I don't know what we'll have, but I know what we should have and how to get it. Fire everyone. Put my cousin in there. Put your uncle in there. Put in guys who don't know anything about it. All they have to do is follow the rules. They'd do better than the people in now. Government is a great job. (continued on page 152)Bruce Willis(continued from page 117) You can earn a lot of money through graft. Wealthy groups send lobbyists to Washington with hundreds of millions of dollars. The money goes somewhere. No one has done the homework to track where it goes. But it's a fact that it gets spent, and that is heinous.

6

Playboy: You've had a love-hate relationship with film critics. Who have they underrated?

Willis: Mel Gibson. He is a modern Cary Grant. I'm not trying to put a curse on him or anything, but he will probably never get an Academy Award because he makes acting look so easy. He is a terrific actor. Others who are great? Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade created something that hasn't been seen on the screen in a long time. He is in Armageddon and creates a completely different character, which makes his work in Sling Blade all the more special. There are a bunch of guys coming up who are great: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Will Patton--fabulous actors. Actresses? The best? Bar none? Meryl Streep, Demi Moore, Madeleine Stowe.

7

Playboy: What unthinkable peril lurks in the next Die Hard movie?

Willis: The studios would be completely happy to have me do the same movie over and over again, but I'm sick of it. After Mercury Rising, my younger brother, a film producer, said to me, "The three major action sequences in the film were derivative of three other films you've done." It was a knock on the door. Time to take a break. In 1987, when I did the first Die Hard, pyrotechnics and explosions were novel. Ten years later they're tapped out. The hook on Die Hard 4 is that it's going to be lowtech. Me and three cop friends get abducted. We're taken into the Amazon and have to escape--without all the explosions and pyrotechnics.

1

Playboy: Terry Gilliam has said, "Bruce is very powerful when he's still--not blowing up half the universe." But isn't it fun to blow up half the universe?

Willis: Stillness is my favorite kind of acting. It draws in the audience and it makes them pay attention. Wesley Snipes has that ability to draw in an audience. The fact is, movies--even action movies--succeed because of the heart, because of the connection the audience makes to real human emotion. It's not the explosions. What makes a movie work is the character's vulnerability, his ability to feel pain and not be some kind of superhuman.

9

Playboy: You once told us that fuck scenes, as you described them, are just hard work, "the most uncomfortable acting days" you will ever experience. What lines do you use with your co-stars to make them less uncomfortable?

Willis: It's weird. You're working with someone you barely know and you're expected to perform intimately with them. So you have to have a conversation. You set ground rules. "This is how we're going to do it. I'll do this, you try this." I got to do sexy scenes with my wife when we made Mortal Thoughts. There was a shorthand that existed. Otherwise, you just discuss it and then do it.

10

Playboy: Is the fact that you and Demi don't work together more often the result of a heart-to-heart talk or advice from a therapist?

Willis: No scripts have come down the pipes. To a certain degree it's good to keep our work separate, unless it is a real fun script. If something great came along, we'd do it in a second.

11

Playboy: Let's say the weekend box office receipts and reviews weren't as good as you both had hoped. Describe the mood at home.

Willis: It's unaffected. I learned long ago to set aside critical responses to my films. By the time a film comes out, my work is done. There is very little I can do to affect critics' responses at that point. It is out of my hands, just like the weather is out of my hands. So after all this time, it doesn't affect me at all. Nor does it affect my wife. She works very hard on her acting, but that has been overlooked since how much she earns was reported. Once you get over a certain amount of money, there is a backlash. People say, "She earns so much money, fuck her." It's jealousy.

Also, most of a film's success or failure has to do with how it is released and marketed and has nothing to do with our work. It's in the hands of the studios. The success of movies has less and less to do with actors. There is so much traffic out there right now. Last fall, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, dozens of new films were released. One of them was Titanic, which turned out to be the big dog and is still carrying on. So much of it has to do with what your film goes up against. Actors don't control that. It's a matter of aligning the planets in a certain way. When they align, you smile. But it's uncontrollable. It's like watching a meteor shower. You go, "Wow, look at that." I didn't have anything to do with the meteors, but I certainly enjoy it.

12

Playboy: In G.I. Jane, your wife's hair was shorter than yours, though you out-did even her in 12 Monkeys. How short is too short?

Willis: I shaved my head for 12 Monkeys because it fit the character. It made sense: In the future, they cut everybody's hair off because of rampant head lice. It's fine having your head shaved. Ask any basketball player. When they shaved my wife's head, it was cool. She takes chances in all her work.

13

Playboy: Looking back, was the Vanity Fair cover, on which she was nude and pregnant, an experience you'd recommend to others?

Willis: Fuck Vanity Fair. Vanity Fair used to be a respectable magazine. Now it's a tabloid. It is all gossip. All the shit in there is just to sell magazines. They would ask somebody, "What does your shit smell like?" if they thought it would sell more magazines. They have no integrity. On the other hand, my wife's cover was inspiring and elegant.

14

Playboy: Having attended three births, what advice can you offer to future fathers?

Willis: Be there. Videotape it and say yes to everything. By the third time, we knew what we were doing. We had three cameras and somebody operating each one. Wouldn't you like to see a videotape of your birth? It didn't exist in those days. It is a singular moment in a kid's life and in a mom and dad's life. I was very cool throughout. I was the calmest one in the room.

15

Playboy: What baby name book did you and Demi use?

Willis: Our kids are all special and we wanted to give them special names. We threw the book away.

16

Playboy: You are a significant shareholder in Planet Hollywood. Defend the $7 cheeseburger.

Willis: They're good cheeseburgers. You're not really paying for just a cheeseburger. You're paying for everything you get to see when you're there.

17

Playboy: On your ranch, you have a satellite dish that brings in 300 channels. Is there anything to watch?

Willis: I don't watch the news. I am on a news blackout. The news--local, national, international--is a daily, even hourly, inoculation of horror. A guy with a gun walked into a school in Scotland or Ireland and killed 40 kids. Have you heard anybody say anything about that lately? We've accepted it. Those guys blew up a building in Oklahoma City, and the survivors and the family members of the survivors are the only ones who care. The media don't care. How many times did you see that fucking plane tumble down the runway knowing there were people in it? It's a sick world. I watch movies. I watch sports, and that's about it. And I watch films with my kids.

18

Playboy: You're the father of three girls. What can only Dad teach them?

Willis: When the time comes, I am going to tell-them the truth about boys--what boys want. There is a certain time in a boy's life when he wants one thing. I'm going to tell my little girls that.

19

Playboy: You have money, a gorgeous wife, three daughters and a successful career. Any complaints?

Willis: When George Clooney complained about the media invading actors' privacy, he did a good job. I am not a public person. No actor is a public person. Show me the law that says actors are public persons. The only public persons are politicians who are paid with tax money. The media encourage Peeping Toms. Twenty-five years ago, if someone stood outside your window and looked in he was called a Peeping Tom and taken to jail. Now people are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for the photos they take. They stake out Madonna's house. They stake out every famous actor's house, hoping to sell a photo because a market has been created for it.

They say we deserve it, that we chose to be famous. That's bullshit. I know thousands of actors and none of them got into the business because they wanted to be famous. They wanted to be actors. Seven years ago there were ten daytime shows with this tell-all tabloid shit, and now there are more than 30. Why? Because there is a market for it. Because the tell-all mentality sells. In the next five or ten years we are going to see public executions on pay-per-view. Right now they're selling Jerry Springer tapes, for $19.95, of people hitting each other with chairs. This guy should go to jail. Maury Povich did a show about young kids who have seen their parents shoot each other. Povich is a heinous cocksucker. Jerry Springer says, "It's just entertainment." But people get hurt. An audience will watch whatever you show them. An audience will watch anything that's tantalizing. Give them something better and they will watch it.

20

Playboy: After almost 11 years of marriage, to what questions do you automatically answer, "Yes, dear"?

Willis: You know what? I don't know. There is a recipe to marriage. It's the same for everybody: one day at a time. That's the way God deals them to you. Here is my advice: Remember that time goes. That's it. There is no other rule. Times goes. Wake up and realize that you are going to die someday. So live your life. Live it completely.