“Bored of it now”: why Bruce Willis didn’t want to be an action hero anymore
Acting may have been his day job, but Bruce Willis was always viewed as more of a movie star. That’s not to say he’d suffocate if tasked to emote his way out of a wet paper bag, but he knew what he was best at and stuck to those (regularly literal) guns more often than not.
The sum of Willis’ recognition from major awards ceremonies amounts to a Golden Globe and two Primetime Emmys, all of which were won for his work on the small screen in Moonlighting and Friends, respectively. Throughout his entire career, he was the recipient of a solitary nod for his feature-length work.
That came in 1990 when he made the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ shortlist at the Golden Globes for the largely forgotten drama In Country, which didn’t do a damn thing to prevent him from becoming one of the biggest and most bankable names of his era. There’s no shame in failing to be in the running for trophies, especially for someone so good at putting butts in seats.
Willis’ filmography amassed over $5billion at the box office, and most of his most lucrative endeavours traded on his action-hero credentials. Of the 20 highest-grossing films in his back catalogue, only The Sixth Sense, voice-only roles in Over the Hedge and The Lego Movie sequel, Pulp Fiction, and Look Who’s Talking don’t feature either Willis or one of his co-stars wielding a firearm or running away from an explosion.
Those were his bread and butter and continued to be even in his final years in front of the camera, even if he’d long since grown bored of it. It’s never ideal for any actor to openly criticise their latest picture when the entire point of hitting the promotional circuit is to convince people to open their wallets and pay to see it, but Willis couldn’t contain his apathy when attempting to drum up buzz for gun-toting comic book adaptation Red 2.
“When you have seen a few fireballs, it’s not exciting anymore,” he lamented of the genre that made him a household name. “I know part of my audience enjoys the explosions, but to be honest, I’m a bit bored of it now.” He wasn’t exactly giving Red 2 the hard sell, and it’s hard for potential audiences to buy into the movie when the guy billed first in the cast called action sequences “one of the most boring parts of my job.”
Did that serve as the catalyst for Willis to reinvent himself and seek more challenging and dramatic parts in the aftermath of Red 2? Nope, but as it turned out, he had his own reasons for dramatically increasing his workload and refusing to venture outside of his wheelhouse.
