*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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yea Willis, despite haters and rotten tomatoes I see Armageddon is now 1 billion in world wide box office. I would pay to see it on the big screen after seeing it at home 5 times.
BRUCE In view of our recent discussion I thought you’d be interested in this latest box office report if you have not already seen it It is also interesting in view of what I said Stallone about being dependent on franchises BOB
“The other wide release this weekend is MGM’s Death Wish remake. The long-gestating project, which was supposed to be directed by Joe Carnahan (he still gets screenplay credit) and star Frank Grillo, opened with something of a whimper. That makes sense considering the current cultural climate. The film was already delayed from Thanksgiving after the Vegas mass shooting and was lucky to not get delayed again after the latest mass-casualty school shooting just two weeks ago. Now directed by Eli Roth and starring Bruce Willis, it earned brutal pre-release reviews even outside of the potentially unfair cultural/political considerations.
There are enough moments of quality (Vincent D’Onofrio and Dean Norris are terrific, and the notion of a trauma surgeon shooting bad guys on the side is interesting) to make me wish it was a good movie. The $30 million production earned $4.275m on Friday, which probably means a $12m opening weekend. That’s below the unadjusted $13m debut of Jodie Foster’s The Brave One back in 2007, which was (partially due to its insane $70m budget) written off as a huge flop back in the day. MGM will hope that the film can leg it to $30m domestic.
To be fair, Willis hasn’t been a draw outside of pure franchise sells (Die Hard, G.I. Joe, presumably Glass next year) for a very long time. Even Red was sold as “see all of your favorite older actors as action stars” more than a singular Willis action vehicle. Nonetheless, when adjusted for inflation, Death Wish will end up in the bottom 20% of its sixty domestic releases. Like Nicolas Cage, he is pretty much confined to VOD land save for a franchise play or a special circumstance. Oh well, he had a heck of a run from 1988 to 2000 (or 2003 if we’re being generous).”
Hey Bob…..Hard to argue about the facts on Bruce and his career. On the good side of things….Death Wish which is being savaged by critics….is actually being liked by audiences. The IMDb score has gone up by almost a point….from 5.9 to 6.7….and the audience approval and rating at Rotten Tomatoes is in the 80s….that has helped raise the UMR score of the movie. So if he has made an entertaining movie……then maybe good things are coming….Glass, Die Hard 6, Motherless Brooklyn….things are looking better.
HI BRUCE
1 I look forward to seeing the film and certainly Mr Moore’s Death Wish performance can be no worse that the awful Jason Statham remake of Bronson’s The Mechanic which you give a 58% rating and a miserable gross of $87 million worldwide. Not only is Demi’s ex a miles better actor than Jason but bottom line Mr Moore is always an ENTERTAINING actor to watch whereas I tried to watch a recent Statham film but switched off the TV.
2 Anyway I don’t wish to sound patronising but I may have some good news for you about Demi’s weaker half later in the week.
Saw and liked Death Wish. Entertaining if you do not take the movie too serious. Movie is not taking itself too serious. But I realize in the states it is a disturbing topic.
1 Stallone at one stage planned a Death Wish remake but apparently lost interest in the project and I find that ironic because I feel Mr Moore is making the same mistake that Sly made when the latter had to be talked out of doing Stanley in Streetcar. My reasons for such pessimism are-
(1) Nobody could do quiet menace like Charlie and I think Bronson’s performance as Paul Kersey will be hard to replicate especially as one associates Charles with the original Death Wish franchise though I regard Mr Moore as overall a better actor than Bronson was.
(2) I’ve said before that I think Willis-Moore [like Sly and Arnie] is getting a bit long in the tooth for action man roles [they COULDN’T these days dig the Panama Canal with their bare hands, could they?]. Charlie was 53 when he played Kersey and Demi’s ex is 62.
(3) These are the first reviews that I am aware of.
“On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 11% based on 35 reviews, and an average ratingof 3.6/10. The website’s critical consensus reads, “Death Wish is little more than a rote retelling that lacks the grit and conviction of the original — and also suffers from spectacularly bad timing. On Metacritic, which assigns normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 26 out of 100, based on 18 critics, indicating “generally unfavorable reviews” IMDB give it a 66% rating and the Cogerson site a 55% one.
2 Nevertheless I will go to see and judge for myself the remake as I like the Death Wish/Point Blank type theme generally speaking Also despite criticism DW 2018 will hopefully do well at the box office as common sense might then prevail with the misnomer Split being removed from Bruce Moore’s Bruce Cogerson table. It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good!
Hey Bob
1. I agree with your thoughts on the remaking of Death Wish. I wish Bruce had not done it….but I am glad for the first time in almost 5 years Bruce is the star of a movie of a major release.
2. Yes the reviews have been horrible……but……a decent box office showing might help Bruce’s career…..and maybe get him out of making these horrible direct to DVD movies he seems to be making these days.
3. I think the ceiling for this movie is about $40 million…..but if it crashes and burns and fails to even make $10 million it would not surprise me.
4. Currently it is tracking to be in the mid teens…….13 to 17 million this weekend……hoping it is closer to 17 million.
5. Hoping to see it this weekend…..because of the 82 movies listed here….I have seen 79 of these movies…..with his two 2018 movies…Death Wish and Acts of Violence and last years DVD movie First Kill….being my only misses.
6. This update has everything but the kitchen sink in it…..trailers for all 82 movies….his direct to DVD movies…..our Letterboxd reviews…..our Personal Favorites…..Possibly Interesting Facts…..the only thing not here is a “What’s Next”….as I thought about doing a section on his upcoming roles….like in Glass and his Edward Norton movie….but decided the page was long enough.
Being a Bruce fan…..even if the news is horrible this weekend….glad the man is in a “big movie” again.
1 I thought you were going to say it was 5 years since you and I agreed on something whereas if you look at the post I have just sent Steve you will see that you and I do agree also about the Academy’s almost criminal negligence of Hanks.
2 According to Wiki Death Wish 2018 cost $30 million to make and if that covers everything and not just a fee to Demi’s ex to enable him to keep paying her alimony it needs to gross 2.5 times $30 million worldwide to break even if an old Variety rule of thumb still holds good. You’d think it will get much more than that with DVD sales etc and as action movies tend to do exceptionally well abroad especially those of Mr Moore. Anyway let us your viewers know what you think of it when you actually see it. Mr Moore has at times suffered an attitude of snobbery from the critics. Meanwhile I’ll continue to keep an eagle eye out for a Cogerson page on W o the other Bruce.
3 As I’ve said before in view of my own hearaches when my personal idols were falling by the wayside I can empathise with your pain over Mr Moore. In the past 15 months though Roger Federer has come back from the dead to win 3 majors and 6 other important titles, has just won 2 prestigious awards, one for Greatest Sportsman of 2017 and the other for the greatest comeback in 2017 and has as well been declared by the Forbes Rich List as the Highest earning Tennis player in the past 12 months [4th highest among sportsmen overall but without exception the person with the highest sponsorship fees]
4 Federer has done all that at the age of 35/36 which for a tennis player is regarded as “old age” [so maybe Sly and Arnie CAN still scale mountains after their legs are blown off!] and if you want to imagine how good Fed’s Indian Summer success has made me feel just envisage how a scenario would make you feel whereby Sir Maurice appears in a Box Office hit the size of GWTW, gets the Oscar and a Golden Globe for best actor and tops Quigley. Therefore maybe what you need by way of a sublimation when your movie idols disappoint you is the back-up of a great sporting hero. In short don’t have all your eggis in the one basket.
OMG! THIS IS AMAZING. THE DETAILS ARE INCREDIBLE!!!!
Hey Candice…..glad our page warranted your comment…greatly appreciate the kind words.