Bruce Willis Movies

Source UltimateMovieRankings.com

*Bruce Willis is taking a break from acting as he battles aphasia, a neurological condition that affects the ability to communicate.  3/30/2022

Want to know the best Bruce Willis movies?  How about the worst Bruce Willis movies?  Curious about Bruce Willis’s box office grosses or which Bruce Willis movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Bruce Willis movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place.

I have followed Bruce Willis’ career since he hit the big time with his star making role as David Addison on Moonlighting. I still think the Moonlighting 3 episode story arc with Mark Harmon,was some the best television I have ever seen and the pinnacle of that series.  Since Moonlighting, Bruce Willis has had a very busy career, making over 60 movies over the last 27 years. It has been a roller coaster ride…the highs….. movies like Pulp Fiction, most of the Die Hards, and The Sixth Sense…..the lows….movies like The Whole Ten Yards, Hudson Hawk, Bonfire of the Vanities and North.  His IMDb page shows 145 acting credits since 1980.  In the table below, Ultimate Movie Rankings ranks movies in 6 different sortable columns.

Bruce Willis Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews, and awards.

Bruce Willis Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Bruce Willis movies by movie title and movie trailers.
  • Sort Bruce Willis movies by co-stars of his movies.
  • Sort Bruce Willis movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
  • Sort Bruce Willis movies by adjusted worldwide box office grosses using current movie ticket cost
  • Sort Bruce Willis movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each Bruce Willis movie received and how many Oscar® wins each Bruce Willis movie won.
  • Sort Bruce Willis movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.

Possibly Interesting Facts About Bruce Willis

1. Walter Bruce Willis was born on March 19, 1955, in the town of Idar-Oberstein, West Germany.  His dad was an American while his mother was a German.

2.  Bruce Willis worked as a bartender when he was a struggling actor in New York City.

3.  In 1984, Bruce Willis left New York City to audition for roles in Los Angeles.

4.  Bruce Willis’ big break was getting the role in the television series Moonlighting (1985-1989).  Glenn Gordon Caron had to fight with ABC to put Willis in the lead role having already signed Shepherd for both the pilot and series. Caron claims he tested Willis about a third of the way through testing over 2,000 actors, knew “this was the guy” immediately, and had to fight through twice as many more acting tests and readings while arguing with ABC executives before receiving (initial) conditional authorization to cast Willis in the pilot. ABC, according to Caron, did not feel that anyone viewing would think there could possibly be any “believable” sexual tension between Shepherd and Willis.

5.  Although Bruce Willis was the 115th choice to play John McClane in 1988’s Die Hard….he was given an unheard, at the time, salary of $5 million dollars.

6.  Bruce Willis was the only celebrity that attended Julia Roberts’ wedding to Daniel Moder. Their friendship is referred to in Ocean’s Twelve (2004), when he mistakes Tess Ocean for Julia Roberts, and asks her about ‘Danny’.

7.   Bruce Willis was the first actor to ever “act” in a video game (Apocalypse (1998)). No one before had ever done voice work along with having their likeness and movements digitally added to the game, as well as receiving prominent billing on the game’s cover.

8.  Bruce Willis was considered for the role of Kyle Reese in The Terminator (1984), which went to Michael Biehn.

9.  Bruce Willis has been married two times.  He has 5 daughters.  His first marriage was to Demi Moore.  His current marriage is to Emma Heming.

10. Check out Bruce Willis’ career compared to current and classic actors.  Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time.

Personal Top Ten Bruce Willis Movies

  • Die Hard
  • The Fifth Element
  • Looper
  • Lucky Number Slevin
  • Nobody’s Fool
  • Pulp Fiction
  • Sin City
  • The Sixth Sense
  • Twelve Monkeys
  • Unbreakable

Our You Tube Video that goes through the Rankings all of Bruce Willis’ movies.

My Letterboxd.com Bruce Willis Movie Reviews.

Steve Lensman’s Bruce Willis Top 50 Movies You Tube Video

If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.

 

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245 thoughts on “Bruce Willis Movies”

  1. Added Steve’s Bruce Willis You Tube Video To This Page…My thoughts found on his channel.

    Ah….one of my Top 3 stars. So…I of course think this is a good pick for a video. I have of course seen all of his movies. The bottom of the rankings have some truly horrible movies. Die Hard 5, Whole 10 Yards, Sunset (with Breakfast of Champions my least favorite Bruce movies). I actually think two of his “biggest bombs”..Hudson Hawk and Bonfire of the Vanities are actually not that bad. Ok…enough about the Willis stinkers. Favorites include Die Hard, The Fifth Element, Looper, Lucky Number Slevin, Nobody’s Fool, Pulp Fiction, Sin City, The Sixth Sense, Twelve Monkeys and Unbreakable. Voted up and shared

    Reply

    1. Hi Bruce, I was going to include more of his recent direct to video films and then I came to my senses. I knew you’d seen them all being such a big fan.

      I didn’t do too badly myself, my tally 48 out of 50, The two I missed are Sunset and In Country. Flora’s tally 3 – Bandits, Red and The Sixth Sense.

      Willis Globe nomination for In Country was the closest he came to winning a major movie award. Whoa!

      Thanks again for the share, comment and vote.

      Reply

  2. I have long argued and will continue to argue that any ranking list of the perceived greatest stars of the modern era, which historians say began in 1962, that does not included Bruce Willis is considerably remiss. I take the view that mega stardom is largely determined by box office performance, a view strongly held by the great Bette Davis.

    One has only to closely analyse the stats table above to clearly see that Willis in his heyday was one of the biggest money-makers around. For example 27 of his movies [up from the 25 mentioned in the text immediately below the table] smashed through the psychological Cogerson $100 million mark for adjusted domestic grosses. This compares massively favourably with the tally of $100 million+ grossers listed for many other artists who are regularly hyped [in my view] as major stars despite being really prestige ACTORS and not stars who can open a film. For example-

    PETER O’TOOLE/CHARLIZE THERON/ANNE BANCROFT
    8 $100+ million grossers each, so individually those artists have under a third of the Willis total of 27 and his total is in fact more than that of all 3 combined.
    DANIEL DAY LEWIS
    4 only $100+ million grossers, just under a seventh of the Willis total.

    I feel that the reasons for mega stars like Bruce being ignored or at least underrated in star ranking lists include (1) the over-importance attached to awards and critical opinion which are all highly subjective criteria and in the case of for example Oscars can often reflect Hollywood ‘politics’ and can be influenced by hype (2) snobbery against certain types of films and performers. Two of the greatest Hollywood legends ever are Crosby and Hope and yet they are almost always absent from ranking lists. Larry Buster Crabbe told in a TV interview of how in his day dramatic actors like Spencer Tracy would not sit at the same studio dining table as the action heroes like himself (3) because information about worldwide grosses can be substantially patchy at times box office performance is normally if not always measured by domestic grosses only.

    Regarding (3) the table above is highly comprehensive and shows that Bruce Willis’ top 30 global hits would have an overall worldwide gross of nearly $12.4 billion at today’s ticket prices, an average of nearly $415 per movie – wow! Accordingly to exclude him from ranking lists of the greatest modern stars is in my view highly arbitrary. Willis is said to have a net worth of $200 million [which could be greater if his grasping ex hadn’t possibly got her clutches on some of it!] and IMDB credits Bruce with 22 acting awards and 38 nominations.

    Reply

    1. Willis video POSTERS entries 50-26: 1/foreign language one for Cold light of Day 2/Sunset 3/Hudson Hawk 4/Blind Date 5/Striking Distance 6/GI Joe – Retaliation 7/foreign language one for Surrogates 8/Sin City 9/2nd one for Hostage 10/two for 16 Blocks 11/Last Man Standing. The latter film is a remake of 1961’s Japanese film Yojimbo starring Toshiro Mifune and directed by Akira Kurosawa director and star of 1954’s Seven Samurai of which the 1960 western The Magnificent Seven was a Hollywood remake.

      My Pick of the best STILLS – all entries 1/Good Day to Die Hard 2/Bonfire of the Vanities 3/Striking Distance [one of my own fave Willis films] 4/GI Joe – Retaliation 5/with his boss Mrs Gimmie More 6/Surrogates 7/Death Wish 8/The Siege 9/Red 2 10/Expendables 2 11/Bandits 12/with Morg 13/Armageddon 14/Planet Terror 15/12 Monkeys 16/6th Sense 17/Pulp Fiction ensemble.

      POSTRS 1-25 /The Siege 2/foreign language one for Red 2 3/Tears of the Sun 4/1st one for Glass 5/Expendables 2 6/Red 7/raunchy one for Planet Terror8/Sin City 9/5th Element 10/1st one for Looper 11/two for 12 Monkeys 12/foreign language one for Die Hard 13/two for Pulp Fiction.

      Even standard of excellence throughout mandating a 98% rating from me. You and WH agree on 4 of Willis’ Top 6 best reviewed. I think you two are furthest away on 5rh Element which you rank 6 and he 18.

      Reply

      1. Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info, trivia, stats and comparison, much appreciated. Happy you liked the posters and stills.

        I wasn’t expecting Willis to have so many films under his belt, I left out a bunch of his recent direct to video films. I’ve seen a couple of these, Willis makes a couple of appearances at the beginning and end while another guy carries the bulk of the film. And thus they have Willis featured on the cover and his name prominently featured too. A bit of a cheat.

        Nic Cage and John Travolta have segued to direct to video features too. Pays the bills I suppose. And maybe they are waiting and hoping for a big comeback role to magically appear. Bruce had his hopes on the Death Wish remake being his big comeback but it didn’t happen.

        There are rumors of another John McClane adventure being planned. Well if Arnie and Sly can resurrect their old hits, why not Bruce? and he’s 10 years younger than those wrinkly musclemen. Adriaaaaan! 🙂

        Five films scored 10 out of 10 from my sources and they’re all in the top 5 on the video –

        Pulp Fiction
        The Sixth Sense
        Die Hard
        12 Monkeys
        Looper

        There are no 9s. Eleven films scored 8 out of 10 including – The Fifth Element, Sin City, Moonrise Kingdom and Unbreakable.

        Pulp Fiction tops all the charts including Bruce’s UMR and Critics chart.

        Bruce on his trademark smirk – “Look, this is my face. If it’s a curse, it’s a curse. And I never said, hey, I’m smirking, America! Look at me! Love me! It’s a little hook that they caught on and they’ve found a way to turn it against me and make it some negative thing, but that’s how I smile. Nothin’ I can do about it.”

        “Hair loss is God’s way of telling me I’m human.”

        “I just can’t live with myself if I started twittering. I just think: “That way lies madness”.

        Another favorite of yours on monday. ‘Rosemary’s Nephew’.

        Reply

        1. HI STEVE

          Excellent feedback – I greatly appreciate it. My own further thoughts.

          1/Even The Great Mumbler had a few films go straight to DVD/videos towards the end of his career.

          2/It seems that actors have a thing about bringing God into baldness. Talking about Mr Mumbles, he is quoted as saying to a reporter about Sinatra “If Frankie ever gets to Heaven he’ll tell God off for letting him go bald!”

          3/Glad YOU are doing a video about Rosemary’s nephew- he doesn’t get ANY love from THIS site!

          Reply

          2. HI FLORA As always nice to hear from you.

            Sorry if my post confused you as I WAS aware of George’s Cogerson page, which is an excellent one at that, but -albeit tongue in cheek – I was referring to the fact that as I recall it Bruce has indicated in past exchanges with me that he has otherwise no “love” for George generally. Certainly he does not seem to appreciate George to the extent that I do.

            Thank you though for your interest in this matter. Keep safe and have a good weekend.

            BOB

  3. I have long argued and will continue to argue that any ranking list of the perceived greatest stars of the modern era, which historians say began in 1962, that does not included Bruce Willis is considerably remiss. I take the view that mega stardom is largely determined by box office performance, a view strongly held by the great Bette Davis.

    One has only to closely analyse the stats table above to clearly see that Willis in his heyday was one of the biggest money-makers around. For example 27 of his movies [up from the 25 mentioned in the text immediately below the table] smashed through the psychological Cogerson $100 million mark for adjusted domestic grosses. This compares massively favourably with the tally of $100 million+ grossers listed for many other artists who are regularly hyped [in my view] as major stars despite being really prestige ACTORS and not stars who can open a film. For example-

    PETER O’TOOLE/CHARLIZE THERON/ANNE BANCROFT
    8 $100+ million grossers each, so individually those artists have under a third of the Willis total of 27
    and his total is in fact more than that of all 3 combined.
    DANIEL DAY LEWIS
    4 only $100+ million grossers, just under a seventh of the Willis total.

    I feel that the reasons for mega stars like Bruce being ignored or at least underrated in star ranking lists include (1) the over-importance attached to awards and critical opinion which are all highly subjective criteria and in the case of for example Oscars can often reflect Hollywood ‘politics’ and can be influenced by hype (2) snobbery against certain types of films and performers. Two of the greatest Hollywood legends ever are Crosby and Hope and yet they are almost always absent from ranking lists. Larry Buster Crabbe told in a TV interview of how in his day dramatic actors like Spencer Tracy would not sit at the same studio dining table as the action heroes like himself (3) because information about worldwide grosses can be substantially patchy at times box office performance is normally if not always measured by domestic grosses only.

    Regarding (3) the table above is highly comprehensive and shows that Bruce Willis’ top 30 global hits would have an overall worldwide gross of nearly $12.4 billion at today’s ticket prices, an average of nearly $415 per movie – wow! Accordingly to exclude him from ranking lists of the greatest modern stars is in my view highly arbitrary. Willis is said to have a net worth of $200 million [which could be greater if his grasping ex hadn’t possibly got her clutches on some of it!] and IMDB credits Bruce with 22 acting awards and 38 nominations.

    Reply

    1. “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.” John 1:23 the bible.

      For years I have preached about how ranking sites because they often split their criteria into sections are often incapable of reflectin how massive performers like mr gimme more have been in movie stardom. “Statistically speaking” rankings often fail to see the woods for the trees.

      “To be called a star you have to be able to pull your own weight at the box office.”said the great Bette Davis and by her yardstick many performers admittedly often fine actors who are drooled over by pompous critics and list rankers would not enable to open the door of a movie house let alone open a movie in it.

      Anyway mr posters thanks for the link. I like articles about the second head of the old gimmemore household.

      Reply

      1. Preaching to the choir Bob……but….statistically Bruce does not have the stats to beat the Top 25. Hope your vacation is going awesome!

        Reply

        1. Hi bruce

          Your stats speaking method is of course a valuable take on all round contributions to movies and you capture most of the modern performers that I would have in a top 25 travolta. And mr gimme more being two notable exceptions that immediately come to mind.

          However my point was that a “ticking of boxes” can,t always capture the spin off influence that monroe, Chaplin and mrmumbles have had. All three do well in AFI lists but none of them is in the top three there whereas they are the only three movie stars as such that are in time magazines 100 greatest people of last century.

          Anyway great to see George burns flagged up. Will look in on him later.

          Reply

          1. Hey Bob…I agree with your comment….I think Bruce is sort of like Steve McQueen….more of a celebrity than a movie star. Both have some classic movies…..but with Steve…he made few movies….and with Bruce….he made more clunkers than classics….but they remained huge stars no matter what. I feel weird arguing against Bruce…especially since he is one of my Top 3 stars. Hopefully he is headed in the right direction these days with regards to bad press.

            A link that shows Bruce in favorable light. https://uproxx.com/movies/kevin-smith-bruce-willis-feud-over-cop-out/

    2. Hey Steve….thanks for sharing this link…I really enjoyed reading it…..and it was unknown to me….which really surprised me. Good stuff.

      Reply

    1. Hey Tim….I agree with you 100%. It is so bad, that when it reached home entertainment…I refused to watch it again. Thanks for stopping by.

      Reply

        1. As I too like mr gimme more what you’re sayin to me is “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”

          Reply

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