Do you celebrate your Birthday this week?
Bruce Willis does on 19th March - check out the tribute to this Birthday Boy turning 60, at the end of this feature.
Do you also share your birthday with a well known, highly regarded & famous Actor or Actress; share your special day with a Director, Producer, Writer, Cinematographer, Singer/Songwriter or Composer of repute; or share an interest in whoever might notch up another year in the coming seven days? Then, look no further! Whilst there will be too many to mention in this small but not insignificant and beautifully written and presented Blog, here are the more notable and noteworthy icons of the big screen, and the small screen, that you will recognise, and that you might just share your birthday with in the week ahead. If so,
Happy Birthday to you from
Odeon Online!
Sunday 15th March
- Jai Courtney - Born 1986, turns 29 - Actor
- David Cronenberg - Born 1943, turns 72 - Director | Producer | Writer | Actor
- Greg Nicotero - Born 1963, turns 52 - Make-Up & Special Effects Artist | Producer | Director | Actor
- Renny Harlin - Born 1959, turns 56 - Director | Producer | Writer | Actor
- Eva Longoria - Born 1975, turns 46 - Actress | Producer | Director
Monday 16th March
- Gore Verbinski - Born 1964, turns 51 - Director | Producer | Writer
- Bernardo Bertolucci - Born 1941, turns 74 - Director | Producer | Writer
Tuesday 17th March
- Rob Lowe - Born 1964, turns 51 - Actor | Producer
- Kurt Russell - Born 1951, turns 64 - Actor | Producer | Writer
- Gary Sinise - Born 1955, turns 60 - Actor | Producer | Director
- Patrick Duffy - Born 1949, turns 66 - Actor | Director
- Lesley-Anne Down - Born 1954, turns 61 - Actress
Wednesday 18th March
- Queen Latifah - Born 1970, turns 45 - Actress | Writer | Singer
- Vanessa Williams - Born 1963, turns 52 - Actress | Writer | Singer
- Luc Besson - Born 1959, turns 56 - Director | Producer | Writer
- Adam Levine - Born 1979, turns 36 - Singer | Songwriter | Actor
Thursday 19th March
- Bruce Willis - Born 1955, turns 60 - Actor | Producer | Singer
- Harvey Weinstein - Born 1952, turns 63 - Producer
- Ursula Andress - Born 1936, turns 79 - Actress
- Glenn Close - Born 1947, turns 68 - Actress | Producer | Director | Writer | Singer
Friday 20th March
- Holly Hunter - Born 1958, turns 57 - Actress | Writer
- David Thewlis - Born 1963, turns 52 - Actor
- Spike Lee - Born 1957, turns 58 - Producer | Director | Writer | Actor
- William Hurt - Born 1950, turns 65 - Actor
Saturday 21st March
- Gary Oldman - Born 1958, turns 57 - Actor | Producer | Director | Writer
- Matthew Broderick - Born 1962, turns 53 - Actor
- Timothy Dalton - Born 1944, turns 71 - Actor
- Rosie O'Donnell - Born 1962, turns 53 - Actress | Writer
Walter Bruce Willis was born in Idar-Oberstein, West Germany to mother Merlene and father David - a US soldier. Living on a US Military Base for his very early life, he was later raised in Penns Grove, New Jersey. He is the oldest of four children with sister Florence and two brothers David and Robert - the latter of which died of pancreatic cancer in 2001. Willis attended Penns Grove High School in his hometown where he developed a stutter but learned to deal with it through stage acting.
Finishing High School he worked as as a security guard at the Salem Nuclear Power Plant and as a transport driver at the DuPont Chambers Works Factory. Having spent time also as a private investigator he joined Montclair State University in the Drama Programme, but left in his junior year and moved to New York City where he supported himself as a bar tender whilst treading the boards in various Off-Broadway stage plays.
He then left New York for California and auditioned for numerous television shows. He appeared in the mid-80's in the likes of
'Miami Vice' and
'The Twilight Zone', and then secured the role as David Addison Jnr. out of 3,000 other hopeful Actors in the successful five series long
'Moonlighting' alongside Cybill Shepherd from 1985-1989. Having starred in a number of small uncredited film roles in the early 80's, his first big screen break came with Blake Edwards in
'Blind Date' with Kim Bassinger in 1987, and then with Edwards again in
'Sunset' in 1988. That same year he took his first outing in a film that would catapult him into the movie stratosphere with an action hero franchise that is now synonymous with his name -
'Die Hard'. The Actor performed all of his own stunts in the first film, and subsequently the series that has so far seen five films for John McClane has generated a total worldwide Box Office haul of US$1.44B off a combined production budget of US$390M.
The success of
'Die Hard' gave rise to two sequels in the 90's with
'Die Hard : Die Harder' in 1990 and
'Die Hard with a Vengeance' in 1995 which cemented Willis' star status as a bona fide action hero. But with these successes came less well received fare with the likes of
'The Bonfire of the Vanities' , 'Striking Distance', 'Hudson Hawk' and
'Color of Night'. Quentin Tarantino's
'Pulp Fiction' in 1994 gave his career a lift as did Terry Gilliam's
'12 Monkey's' in 1995 and Luc Besson's
'The Fifth Element' in 1997. Others that flew largely under the radar included
'Last Man Standing', 'Mercury Rising', 'Breakfast of Champions', 'The Story of Us', interspersed with more quirky popular fare
'North' and
'Death Becomes Her'.
'Armageddon' for Director Michael Bay received very average critical ratings but with a Box Office stash of US$554M was the biggest commercial success of 1998 worldwide.
'The Sixth Sense' brought Willis back into the limelight and helped him close out the 90's on a high note with upcoming Director M. Night Shyamalan.
Continuing his busyness into the 2000's he kicked off with
'The Whole Nine Yards' for which he reprised his role as Jimmy 'The Tulip' Tudeski in 2004's '
The Whole Ten Yards', and
'Unbreakable' with M. Night Shyamalan once more. Playing either the hardened war hero in the likes of
'Hart's War' and
'Tears of the Sun', or the grizzled police officer type in
'Hostage', '16 Blocks', 'Live Free or Die Hard', 'Surrogates' and
'Sin City', his career continues to entertain and draw an audience for the on-screen spectacle he provides.
As 2010 clicked over his action status continued unabated with
'The Expendables' in 2010 headed up by stable mate Sylvester Stallone and all all star 80's ensemble action hero cast, and then again with
'The Expendables 2' in 2012 - he pulled out of 2014's
'Expendables 3' because allegedly he demanded a bigger pay cheque which Stallone and his Producers were not prepared to pay.
'RED' in 2010 and
'RED 2' in 2013 also helped keep the action star mantle in place, with other notable offerings including
'Looper' and
'Moonrise Kingdom' in 2012,
'A Good Day to Die Hard' in 2013 and
'Sin City : A Dame to Kill For' in 2014.
'Catch .44', 'Lay the Favourite', 'The Cold Light of Day', 'G.I.Joe : Retaliation' and
'The Prince' bring us up to date. Next up is
'Vice' likely to go straight to DVD & BluRay in early 2015, with
'Rock the Kasbah' later in 2015 and
'Captive' and
'Extraction' due in 2016.
Outside of the movie business, Willis is an astute property owner and investor, and businessman. For a few years he co-owned Production Company 'Cheyenne Enterprises', several small businesses, was co-founder of 'Planet Hollywood' and owns a small percentage of 'Sobieski Vodka'.
He has 104 acting credits to his name and would be regarded as one of Hollywood's busiest jobbing Actors. He also has seven Producer credits to his name and wrote the story too for 'Hudson Hawk'. He won the Golden Globe in 1987 for 'Moonlighting' and has two Primetime Emmy Awards for 'Moonlighting' and 'Friends' and all up has garnered twenty award wins and a further 33 nominations throughout his career to date. He also has enjoyed success as a singer and recording artist with three solo albums and four compilation albums.
He was married to Actress Demi Moore from 1987 to 2000 with whom he has three children - Rummer (born 1988), Scout (born 1991), and Talulah (born 1994). In 2009 Willis married model Emma Harding with whom he has two children - Mabel (born 2012) and Evelyn (born 2014). A supporter of the constitutional right to bear arms, he has some Republican political leanings but describes himself a 'apolitical', and he has actively supported military intervention in Iraq as a means to restore democracy and freedom ultimately. He took a pay cheque of US$5M for the first
'Die Hard' instalment in 1998 and US$25M twenty years later for
'Live Free or Die Hard' . . . not a bad pay day!
Bruce Willis - head shaven, wisecracking, smirking gun toting action hero; Box Office draw card; predictably familiar; always entertaining and as colourful off-screen as on it - keep doing what you do and we'll keep putting our bums on seats you watch you do it! Happy Birthday to you from Odeon Online.
-Steve, at Odeon Online-
There is a lot to like about action comedy 'RED' - which I saw last night and very entertaining it is too. Directed by Robert Schwentke and based on a limited comic book series of the same name this film was made for US$58M and made US$200M and stars Bruce Willis (always at his best in these actioners); John Malkovich (hamming it up & loving it); Morgan Freeman (as steady as ever); Helen Mirren (always delightful and to see her taking a bullet and toting a machine gun is worth the ticket price alone); Brian Cox, Karl Urban, Richard Dreyfus and Ernest Borgnine - what an all star line up and great fun.
The 'RED' here is the shortening for 'Retired and Extremely Dangerous' and refers to former black-ops CIA Agent Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) who is now happily retired and living the quiet life in suburban Cleveland. Chatting over the phone, as he does often, to Customer Service Agent Sarah Ross (Mary-Louise Parker) at the Pension Office who issue his monthly pension cheque which he promptly rips up just so he can call Sarah and chat away the day, he is later that night raided by a six-man hit squad that Frank quickly dispenses with. Realising that his phone has been tapped he gets over to Kansas City to protect Sarah, but when she refuses to leave with the guy she has only ever spoken to on the phone, he binds and gags her and so becomes his reluctant companion. Needing to uncover who is tracking him down and why, he turns to his former associates for help, while back at the CIA HQ Agent William Cooper (Karl Urban) is instructed to hunt down Frank and kill him.
Frank then heads off to New Orleans to see his CIA Mentor Joe Matheson (Morgan Freeman) living in a nursing home who advises the same hit squad that attacked Frank, took out a New York Times Reporter. So Frank and Sarah head to New York looking for clues where they come across a hit-list, but not before Cooper has arrived on the scene and bungles his attempt to get to Frank and secure the list, resulting in his (temporary) arrest. From there they get to Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich) also a former black-ops CIA Agent and now retired, but a deeply paranoid conspiracy theorist.
Upon reading the list Boggs comes to the realisation that all those shown therein are linked to an earlier 1981 Guatemalan covert operation in which Frank and Marvin were involved. One on the list is still alive and so he is tracked down and before being gunned down from an above helicopter reveals that the mission in Guatemala involved the extraction of an important individual who is now the Vice President of the free world (Julian McMahon), but back then was involved in the massacre of village civilians.
Along the way there are further altercations with Cooper in which Frank is injured but manages to escape, they seek safe haven in the home of former assassin Victoria (Helen Mirren) who joins the quest, and they secure a meeting with an illegal arms dealer (Richard Dreyfus) whose name is not on the list but whom they believe is linked in some way that they have yet to uncover. At this point the house is surrounded by Cooper and his CIA henchmen who open fire, but in the confusion and the hail of bullets our RED Team escape courtesy of ex-Russian Secret Agent and former lover of Victoria (Brian Cox).
This all leads to a fundraiser for the Vice-President back in Chicago which the RED Team infiltrate and successfully manage to kidnap the Vice-President which Frank now wants to trade for Sarah who was taken captive by Cooper during in the firefight back at Victoria's house. As all the protagonists come together the body count rises as the Vice President is killed by the arms dealer who is killed by Frank leaving Cooper to clean things up as he agrees to let the RED guys walk free no further questions asked!
