He achieved fame with a leading role on the comedy-drama series Moonlighting (1985–1989) and has appeared in over one hundred films, gaining recognition as an action hero for his portrayal of John McClane in the Die Hard franchise (1988–2013).

[1][2] Willis's other credits include The Last Boy Scout (1991), Pulp Fiction (1994), 12 Monkeys (1995), The Fifth Element (1997), Armageddon (1998), The Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable, The Whole Nine Yards (both 2000), Tears of the Sun (2003), Sin City (2005), The Expendables, Red (both 2010), Looper (2012), and Glass (2019).

[13] He turned to acting after working as a private investigator,[citation needed] a role he would later play in the comedy-drama series Moonlighting and the action-comedy film The Last Boy Scout.

Willis enrolled in the drama program at Montclair State University,[14] where he was cast in a production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

[8] During the height of the show's success, beverage maker Seagram hired Willis as the pitchman for their Golden Wine Cooler products.

[20] In 1987, Willis obtained his first lead role in the Blake Edwards film Blind Date, co-starring with Kim Basinger and John Larroquette.

[28][29] In the early 1990s, Willis's career suffered a moderate slump, as he starred in flops such as The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) and Hudson Hawk (1991), although he did find box office success with The Last Boy Scout.

He gained more success with Striking Distance (1993) but flopped again with Color of Night (1994): it was savaged by critics but did well in the home video market and became one of the Top 20 most-rented films in the United States in 1995.

[31] In 1994, Willis also had a leading role in one part of Quentin Tarantino's acclaimed Pulp Fiction;[8] the film's success gave a boost to his career, and he starred alongside his Look Who's Talking co-star John Travolta.

In the movie, he plays a drunken criminal named "Muddy Grimes", who mistakenly sends Judge's titular characters to kill his wife, Dallas (voiced by Moore).

However, by the end of the 1990s his career had fallen into another slump with critically panned films like The Jackal (which despite negative reviews was a box office hit), Mercury Rising, and Breakfast of Champions, as well as the implosion of the production of Broadway Brawler, a debacle salvaged only by the success of the Michael Bay-directed Armageddon, which Willis had agreed to star in as compensation for the failed production, and which turned out to be the highest-grossing film of 1998 worldwide.

[8] In 2000, Willis won an Emmy[36] for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for his work on Friends (in which he played the father of Ross Geller's much-younger girlfriend).

[39] On many of his appearances on the show, Willis staged elaborate jokes, such as wearing a day-glo orange suit in honor of the Central Park gates, having one side of his face made up with simulated birdshot wounds after the Harry Whittington shooting, or trying to break a record (a parody of David Blaine) of staying underwater for only twenty seconds.

[40] On his June 25, 2007, appearance, he wore a mini-wind turbine on his head to accompany a joke about his own fictional documentary titled An Unappealing Hunch (a wordplay on An Inconvenient Truth).

Willis has appeared in five films with Samuel L. Jackson (National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1, Pulp Fiction, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Unbreakable, and Glass) and both actors were slated to work together in Black Water Transit, before dropping out.

[43] Willis was slated to play U.S. Army general William R. Peers in director Oliver Stone's Pinkville, a drama about the investigation of the 1968 My Lai massacre.

[46][47] Willis starred with Tracy Morgan in the 2010 comedy Cop Out, directed by Kevin Smith, about two police detectives investigating the theft of a baseball card.

[54] Willis also joined Vince Vaughn and Catherine Zeta-Jones in Lay the Favorite, directed by Stephen Frears, about a Las Vegas cocktail waitress who becomes an elite professional gambler.

Willis reprised his most famous role, John McClane, for a fifth time, starring in A Good Day to Die Hard, which was released on February 14, 2013.

[56] In an interview, Willis said, "I have a warm spot in my heart for Die Hard..... it's just the sheer novelty of being able to play the same character over 25 years and still be asked back is fun.

[58] In 2015, Willis made his Broadway debut in William Goldman's adaptation of Stephen King's novel Misery opposite Laurie Metcalf at the Broadhurst Theatre.

[63] Described by Chris Nashawaty of Esquire as "a profitable safe harbor" for older actors, similar to The Expendables, most of the films were released direct-to-video and were widely panned.

[63] On March 30, 2022, Willis's family announced that he was retiring because he had been diagnosed with aphasia, a disorder typically caused by damage to the area of the brain that controls language expression and comprehension.

[68][69] The Golden Raspberry Awards retracted its Willis category, deeming it inappropriate to give a Razzie to someone whose performance was affected by a medical condition.

[73] According to Gregg Day, a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic's Florida campus, the symptoms include difficulties with language and comprehension, and misinterpretation of instructions.

[79] He also owns several small businesses in Hailey, Idaho, including The Mint Bar and The Liberty Theater and was one of the first promoters of Planet Hollywood, with actors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone.

Willis purchased 12,000 boxes of cookies, and they were distributed to sailors aboard USS John F. Kennedy and other troops stationed throughout the Middle East at the time.

[103] It was believed he offered US$1 million to any noncombatant who turned in terrorist leaders Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; in the June 2007 issue of Vanity Fair, however, he clarified that the statement was made hypothetically and not meant to be taken literally.

[110] In several interviews Willis has said that he supports increased salaries for teachers and police officers, and that he is disappointed in the United States foster care system and its treatment of Native Americans.

[19] On August 17, 2006, Willis was named in a Los Angeles Times advertisement that condemned Hamas and Hezbollah and supported Israel in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war.