No other actor in Hollywood could bring John McClane to life quite like Bruce Willis does. As the New York cop, Willis brings to the role both a charming sarcasm and gritty, blue collar determination. Columnist Liz Smith once described Willis as having "the same forceful acting presence noted in the young Bogart and the young Cagney." Since Die Hard, Willis has demonstrated remarkable versatility in a film career that has worldwide box office grosses in excess of $1.3 billion.

Willis came to Die Hard after yet another super season of ABC's Moonlighting and the smash opening of his first film, Blake Edward's Blind Date. Willis plays a low-key financial analyst who is befuddled, bewildered and finally bewitched by Kim Bassinger. He followed this playing Tom Mix for Edwards' Sunset, a murder mystery set in the Twenties, co-starring James Garner as Wyatt Earp.

Willis was born in 1955 in Germany where his father was stationed in the Army. At two, the family returned to New Jersey, where he attended high school in next door Penns Grove, where he graduated in 1973.

After a series of odd jobs and playing the harmonica for local bands, Willis enrolled in Montclair State College, a school with one of the best theater departments in the East. In 1977, he got a part in a play called Heaven and Earth, which was incentive enough for him to move to Hell's Kitchen to pursue and acting career. Although he was soon acting steadily, it was the succession of bartending jobs that paid most of the rent and gave him days for auditions. Finally, in 1984, Willis landed the plum lead role of Eddie in Sam Shepard's Fool For Love, a 100 run performance that landed him a Hollywood Agent. Later that year, Willis came to Los Angeles and beat 3000 contenders for the role off David Addison in Moonlighting, opposite Cybill Shepherd.

Willis followed Die Hard in Norman Jewison's In Country, playing a Vietnam War veteran haunted by combat memories. Returning to comedy, Willis provided the voice of wise-cracking baby "Mikey" in the highly successful Look Who's Talking and its sequel, Look Who's Talking, Too.

In 1990, Willis starred in Die Hard 2, the number two box office hit of the summer, and then starred in Brian DePalma's Bonfire of the Vanities, opposite Tom Hanks and Melanie Griffith.

Willis went on to star opposite Demi Moore and Glenne Headly in the psychological drama Mortal Thoughts, as cat burglar extraordinaire in Hudson Hawk, and as gangster Bo Weinberg in Billy Bathgate.

After playing a private detective who teams up with an ex-football player to solve a murder in The Last Boy Scout, Willis portrayed a meek anti-hero caught between a pair of deathless and ferociously competitive beauties played by Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn in Death Becomes Her. Willis then starred in the number one box office hit Striking Distance, laying a river patrol cop. He next appeared in Rob Reiner's bittersweet tale North, and toplined Color of Night.

Most recently, Willis starred in Quentin Tarantino's critical and box office hit, Pulp Fiction, winner of the Palme d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival. He was also seen in Robert Benton's widely-praised film Nobody's Fool, co-starring Paul Newman

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