He comes into the room with that smile on his face. The smile that is the smile of that dude you knew in high school who nobody thought would amount to much but somehow stumbled his way into becoming a kajillionaire by investing in some chain of party bars like Señor Frog’s and now saunters over to shake your hand as you sit on a sofa in his McMansion. The smile that says, "Dude, I know—can you friggin’ believe this? Me, neither. But hey, someone’s gotta live the life. Brewski?"
The McMansion is not in South Jersey, where Willis grew up, nor is it in Beverly Hills. This one is tucked away in a quiet corner of Mayfair, London, where Willis is shooting Red 2 (what? you never saw Red?), which will be his seventy-third movie in a film career that started in 1987 opposite Kim Basinger in Blind Date and has now yielded everything from Pulp Fiction to The Sixth Sense to 12 Monkeys to The Bonfire of the Vanities to Moonrise Kingdom. And of course, there’s that ur-franchise that was born twenty-five years ago, Die Hard, the fifth installment of which crashed into theaters on Valentine’s Day. Willis is 57 now, remarried to a British model and with a new baby, but still dresses like the off-duty bartender he once was—back when he was mixing drinks on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, before he got his break on Moonlighting: black jeans and a gray long-sleeve T-shirt, over which he’s pulled a short-sleeve black T-shirt. Black socks. No shoes. He wiggles his toes a lot.
"Yeah," Willis says, looking around the house, "when it comes time to go on location, they show you pictures of houses on a computer and you pick one, blind." He puts a palm to his hairless head, half-cracks his neck, scans the surroundings with a slight scowl, and says, "Never sure about that."
We’re in some anteroom that’s supposed to pass for a library. But there’s just a handful of books placed here and there on the shelves. Mostly expensive-looking art books. There’s a fireplace—gas—and Willis considers it for a moment.
"How do you think you turn this on?" he asks.
He feels around on the side of the chimney, finally finds a button. A dull flame sputters awake, artificial warmth. There are two couches, face-to-face. Willis plops down, stretches out, looks at the flame. He stares at it for what seems like minutes. Finally, speaking to the fire, he says, "So, what’s up? What do you think of London? I’m still trying to figure it out. But I love the history here. Meanwhile, those kids William and Kate are going to have a baby. That’s nice."
GQ: Think about that mother-son dynamic between Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles...
Bruce Willis: The idea of my mom being in charge of the country for the last sixty years would be [laughs]...shocking.
GQ: Is there a period in history you wish you could have lived in?
Bruce Willis: I would go a little forward. I’d like to see that. I’d also like to see what the pilgrimage from the East Coast to California was like. Fly over it. I think it would be very drastic. You’ve got to go catch whatever you’re going to put on the table that night. You’ve got to go find some water. You’ve got to be warm. [Pauses. Looks into the fire for a few moments.] I can’t even figure my job out. I can’t figure out the proper metaphor to try to explain what it is I do, even to my kids. I can’t get it into a nice, cozy box—"This is what I do, and this is why." I still like it—you can’t beat the dough. But I’m sure there will be some kind of penance. The Catholic side of me—not that I am Catholic, but—just assumes that there’s going to be a bill to pay. I don’t know, maybe I should be doing something else, but I don’t know what it would be.
GQ: Are there different moves you would have made in your career? Like, for instance, you started in the theater.
Bruce Willis: I’d like to go and do theater. It seems like a more reasonable job, more manageable.
GQ: You should do Beckett. Beckett is the thinking man’s Three Stooges. You have a love for that kind of withering, destruction-based comedy, and Beckett has that kind of futility, but it’s beautiful.
Bruce Willis: Stooges and pageantry. I love the Stooges. I love ’em all, but Larry is my favorite. He had his own physical things that he was very good at, but he always teed it up. Are you a Stooges fan? How can you not be?
GQ: I have formative memories of watching them with my brother. The Stooges teach you about life. They socialize you for manhood.
Bruce Willis: Any guy who wants to have a well-rounded man life is not complete until he accepts the mechanics and zaniness of the Stooges. I no longer try to explain it to women.
GQ: What are your favorite Stooges lines?
Bruce Willis: Any version of [affecting the voice of Larry] "Say, what are you gonna do with that?" because it’s about to happen. The math of that line is about to happen to Larry. [Pauses. Tries to stretch out on the couch for a moment; decides he can’t get comfortable. Sits back up, that smile still on his face.] Well, you’ve got me smiling now. It’s kind of funny and kind of violent.
GQ: You learn it when you’re 5 years old: Comedy is someone else in pain. You know a perfect example of violence as comedy? Pulp Fiction. When I saw it for the first time, I didn’t know the Gimp scene was being played for laughs.
Bruce Willis: Dark laughs. That was great writing married to frightening violence. Just death everywhere. The timing of what gets said and what happens in the "This has been a very weird day" joke, which goes on and on. There’s romance in that for me. Drugs, violence, great writing. [Pauses. Tries again to lie down/stretch out. Gives up again.] I still laugh about those things now. Me seeing Ving Rhames on the street, and then what happens is way past the normal.
GQ: You guys have ball gags on. That’s putting yourself in a very vulnerable state, re your career. If that scene doesn’t work... Did you ever think of that?
Bruce Willis: No... Those were a couple of dark days of shooting. Grim. There’s a little scene of me gagging with that ball in my mouth, and Quentin said, "Do you want to stop for a minute?" And I said, [makes a sound as though he has a ball gag in his mouth].
GQ: That scene where Ving is paying you to take a dive—it’s incredible, because for maybe two solid minutes, the camera looks only at you. It is a scene that is all about your stillness. When people think of your work, it’s easy to think it is all big, loud movies. Yet I see a lot of stillness.
Bruce Willis: It’s in the toolbox now, stillness. When you’re still—that’s when actors start giving away dialogue. It seems like you are being gracious, giving someone else your lines, but it’s an old trick. If others are speaking, the camera wants to see you act—and react. Steve McQueen used to try to give everyone his dialogue. In that scene with Ving, I was determined to just be listening, thinking about the crime and what we were doing in real time. Being present.
GQ: When was the first time you performed?
Bruce Willis: Some Cub Scout show. I did little skits you would probably find in the Cub Scout handbook. Little tricks. Like a vaudeville gag where you pretend to show the audience that you’re mixing up something, and then at the last minute it’s like you’re going to throw it on the audience, but it’s just the oatmeal, not the oatmeal and the paint and all that. It got a big laugh, and I thought, "This is it." The Cub Scout years, I had a terrible stutter. But then I did some theater somewhere, probably in high school. And when I memorized words, I didn’t stutter, which was just miraculous. That was the beginning of the gradual dispelling of my stutter. I thought I was handicapped. I couldn’t talk at all. I still stutter around some people now.
GQ: But then you were also the student-body president in high school.
Bruce Willis: To be elected class president was an honor. [laughs]
GQ: You had to give speeches, right?
Bruce Willis: Yeah, I said a few things. It was probably just something to make people laugh. In the previous years, everyone was really taking it seriously. By the time we got to be seniors, we just wanted to smoke weed and not go to meetings.
GQ: Are you sober these days?
Bruce Willis: I had been sober [for a while]. But once I realized that I wasn’t gonna run myself off the pier of life with alcohol, drinking vodka out of the bottle every day... I have wine now, mostly when I eat.
GQ: I’m curious about how Moonrise Kingdom happened. It seems like another unconventional Willis choice. And yet to me, you’re the heart of that film. And, again, there’s a quietness and a stillness and a soulfulness there.
Bruce Willis: How it happened was, it was a year where there were a lot of directors I knew I wanted to work with. That year I worked with Stephen Frears, Wes Anderson, Rian Johnson, all on little, different kinds of films. How [Anderson] shoots is a very different editorial process. He aims the camera at a big thing, and the actors walk in and walk out, or something happens in the center of the frame until the frame changes. So much of that story was dictated by the fact that it was set in the ’60s—it was a period piece. And the wardrobe was already chosen for us. They just said, "You’re going to wear this. Here’s the shirt and the socks, here are the glasses." I said, "Well, all right. And is it okay if I wear this wig, to kind of age up a little bit?" And he said, "Yeah, okay. That works." His original template for the look of my character was McGeorge Bundy.
GQ: Well, you had his glasses.
Bruce Willis: Yeah. I said, "If I can wear these glasses, I know what to do." They gave me a way to look at the world. The glasses were key. I’ve been reading a lot of—I read a lot anyway, but—I’ve been reading a lot, in Europe. What’s that book by that TV Fox guy?
GQ: Bill O’Reilly?
Bruce Willis: Yeah. He wrote about the assassination of Lincoln and the assassination of JFK. I learned more things from him and his story of JFK than I ever knew. Bill O’Reilly is a great researcher. Whatever you think about his character that he plays in the news, he’s a great researcher.
GQ: How old were you when Kennedy was shot?
Bruce Willis: Eight or 9? My sister and two brothers and I walked around the house, reenacting the funeral procession. We had a wagon and some blankets. What else are you supposed to do? I didn’t really know what had happened, just that the grown-ups were crying.
GQ: Speaking of parents, that’s one more thing from Pulp Fiction. The father’s watch. What are those talismans in your life?
Before Willis can answer, his wife, Emma Heming-Willis, enters, carrying a mug of coffee and their 8-month-old daughter, Mabel, who is wearing cashmere head to toe. Willis stands up and cradles his daughter in his arms, nuzzles his bald head against her head. Two chrome domes, across generations. Willis kisses his daughter and then smiles at Emma, who points at the fireplace and expresses surprise that he figured it out. After a moment, Willis reluctantly returns Mabel to her mother, and Emma hands Willis the mug. Then she turns and walks toward the kitchen.
All right. Thanks for the coffee. I love you. [pauses] My father had a tradition that I picked up. He had this little plastic version of a trunk, and he kept his cuff links in it, little stuff like that. And the first time I saw it, when I was a kid, I just thought that was great. Upstairs somewhere there’s a little box with all my junk—the first earring I wore, like that. I’m not going to throw that away, because I’m sure someone will find that amazing later. But maybe not. I may just be doing it for myself.
GQ: What advice would you give to someone who asked?
Bruce Willis: I recently heard one of my fellow actors say it in three words: "Just shut up." Just go silent. Maybe it’s being older; maybe that’s just a tiny tag of wisdom, that you’ve got to think about something before you say something. I once thought that somehow, with this job, also comes the inherent right to say whatever the fuck I want regardless of whether I’m right or wrong or think that anybody needs to hear it or should hear it.
Another thing that I heard whispered by another actor is "You’ve got to do the hard stuff first." Do the big scene first, and then you can do the small scenes and have fun. It’s great advice for life. I say it to my kids: Do the hard stuff first. Then you can go and do whatever you want to do.
GQ: Do you have any goals left?
Bruce Willis: To keep it looking lifelike. In the past few months, I’ve read a lot about Old Hollywood—Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Audrey Hepburn, William Holden. Every story is that everyone was struggling. Everyone was flailing wildly. And it’s kind of reassuring, because if you only see the performance, it’s easy to associate that person with their work. Cary Grant was referring to himself as "Cary Grant the actor. That’s not me." He would make a big difference between those two things.
GQ: What’s that line he has—"Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant."
Bruce Willis: "And someday I might." Yeah. [pauses] What’s the last really funny movie you saw?
GQ: Maybe Superbad?
Bruce Willis: I liked Superbad... It would take me a long time to think what the last funny movie I saw was. Moonlighting was kind of screwball comedy. Talk real fast. Be funny. Cary Grant sent us a note.
GQ: He sent you a note?
Bruce Willis: Because he watched Moonlighting. It was awesome...yeah. I remember, back then, in my hubris, thinking everyone wants to see me. I called Barbara Stanwyck at the L’Ermitage hotel, where she was spending the later years of her life. She says, "Who is this?" Very cranky. [affecting a meek voice] "It’s Bruce Willis. I was just calling to say that I’m such a huge fan—" "Oh. Okay. Thank you." My hubris exceeded my understanding of not bothering people. I don’t make those calls so much anymore.
GQ: Is that a tattoo on your finger? It looks very 12 Monkeys-like. Like some kind of ID.
Bruce Willis: It’s a tattoo of the month and date that I got married to my wife, the mother of my child. It just seemed like a little thing I wanted to have there.
GQ: Complete this sentence: If I live long enough, I...
Bruce Willis: ...should approach a bigger task than I approach now.
GQ: What does that mean?
Bruce Willis: The work that I do. If you know you only have a certain amount of time left, what would be the best thing you could possibly do with that time? That’s a good question. I don’t know. I do question the whimsicalness of this profession. It’s a great job to have the task of trying to entertain people. But if you’ve read any of the Marlon Brando stuff, you know it’s no job for a grown man.
GQ: Would you ever do a Cary Grant and retire? It seems like actors don’t retire anymore.
Bruce Willis: Well, I have to stop doing it at some point, and I would like to do it with the same grace that he did. Who’s another actor who continued to work? Eastwood is still doing it. And he’s still doing great, telling stories. Telling stories is a way to make money.
GQ: Is there a part of you that feels like you’re in conflict with this thing, your career?
Bruce Willis: I’d like to think that I have some control over it and that I could choose. I’m sanguine about it.
GQ: There is the image of "Bruce Willis," but what will resonate with people who read this interview is that you’re not John McClane. It’s more like "Hey, guess what, kids? I’m a 57-year-old guy, and it doesn’t matter if you’re making movies or working in an office, you wonder about your life. Your purpose." That’s the eternal unifier here.
Bruce Willis: Yes. And nobody wants to hear this bad news, but we’re all dying on some level. I’m going to try to keep the machine moving forward as much as possible and not have to think about the eventuality of becoming more frail and less able to do the work. I know that I’m not going into politics. That’s not an option. I was asked, and I said, "Did you hear any of the stuff about me when I was a kid?"
GQ: Would you really do something like that?
Bruce Willis: Maybe on a smaller level?
GQ: Mayor of Carmel?
Bruce Willis: Something where you can make the town a little better. That idea of trying to help someone and not fuck it up.
GQ: Maybe you’re going to punch me in the face for saying this, but I’ve noticed some pretty interesting parallels here, between you and Clint Eastwood and the arcs of your careers: You both started on TV shows; then, while on hiatus from the shows, you both shot movies that made your careers.
Bruce Willis: I did not know that.
GQ: But check this: You are now 57, making your fifth Die Hard. Eastwood made his fifth and final Dirty Harry when he was 57.
Bruce Willis: I like that.
GQ: One could say, like Eastwood, you make it look too easy. People take it for granted how hard it is to play these characters, Dirty Harry and John McClane.
Bruce Willis: Mel Gibson also fits that mold, of having an awareness that everybody thinks we’re just fucking around. But it does require a method to your good fortune.
GQ: You’ve said that you think your best work is ahead of you. Maybe it is. For most of his career, Eastwood was seen as just a journeyman actor. He wasn’t nominated for an Oscar until he was 62.
Bruce Willis: It’s like fire, right? You take fire for granted. Fire runs the house, keeps the house warm. Have a little fireplace right here. But if we were never given the gift of fire, nobody would go, "Ah, wish I had some fire." Cary Grant? No Oscar, except for the one that they created to give to him. [pauses] I don’t think about it too much. It just always has seemed whimsical to me, to think about it. You don’t get an Oscar for comedy, and you don’t get it for shooting people. You get it for novelty, for being fascinating to watch in some character role. But the Die Hard stuff and Dirty Harry are all fraught with the same thing that every story is fraught with.
The middle years to now makes me start to think that there should come a time when I should not work so much. I don’t question other actors in their age and what they do; I just think, "Wow, they’re still fucking great." They’re still doing it. There are movies where if I know Anthony Hopkins is in it, I’ll go see it. I’m still a fan of films, I still go to movies. I just saw Argo. It’s fantastic.
These five [Die Hard] films are all fine films. You can see me and what was on my mind, how I said it, in 1988. That year that I got to do Die Hard because of Cybill Shepherd’s impending pregnancy, I caught that little window. I had been told by my then girlfriend, "You can’t do this! This is too violent!" By then I’d also considered Lethal Weapon. I had a shot at that, too. She told me, "It’s too violent! This isn’t what you should be doing!" So in the same year, I ended up doing a couples comedy [Blind Date] and violence.
GQ: And now we’re back to the Three Stooges.
Bruce Willis: Good bad guys you can’t do without.
GQ: What’s your favorite book?
Bruce Willis: Maybe The Hobbit. That guy has created his own little religion, his own little world. And I think it was great escapism. I just went back and read it again. I always said that it would make a great film. But no film can live up to the images you have in your head when you’re 16 or 17 years old and caught up in the noble actions of the characters.
GQ: Was that book a comfort to you?
Bruce Willis: It was something I could do by myself.
GQ: What’s your epitaph going to be?
Bruce Willis: Hmm. Fatherhood’s not a bad gig. Epic stuff... I’m not sure. Did you mean, like, a film that’s epic...?
GQ: No, I’m sorry. I mumbled. I said, What will your epitaph be?
Bruce Willis: I think that’s something that’s better for someone else to come up with.
GQ: You’re an actor—you’re used to someone else writing the lines.
Bruce Willis: Yeah. I’m not sure that I have that information.
GQ: Do you have a motto?
Bruce Willis: "Live and let live" is the closest I have. It works for pretty much everything. It has comic aspects to it and it has the real-deal aspects to it. It fits the Stooges.
Michael Hainey is GQ’s deputy editor and the author of the new memoir After Visiting Friends: A Son’s Story.
