Bruce Willis on screen: from Die Hard to Looper

The sad news that Bruce Willis is ‘stepping away’ from acting due to an aphasia diagnosis came as a surprise to fans, but the film industry has been rife with rumours about his possible medical problems over recent years.

The slew of cheap straight-to-DVD action thrillers (with relatively little screen time) he starred in since 2014 made observers wonder whether Willis was making as much money as he could to ensure both care in his retirement and a decent inheritance for his family.

The fact that the famously motor mouthed actor of Moonlighting and his long run of hit movies opted for increasingly taciturn roles led insiders to wonder whether something was wrong.

Willis’ last ‘serious’ role was back in 2019, when he took a small but pivotal role in Ed Norton’s Neo Noir Motherless Brooklyn, earning critical praise as private detective Frank Minna.

The actor famously parlayed his TV success in Moonlighting to movie stardom, where his cocky persona from the show began swiftly to give way (with exceptions) to a more morose kind of performance. Willis