Bruce Willis turned 70 years old this week and while Willis has had to retire from acting due to health issues, his decades of incredible work and his popular characters will live on. It seems this may have been a consideration even much earlier in his career as Samuel L. Jackson says the actor gave him some advice once that ultimately led to him becoming the MCU’s Nick Fury.
In 1995, Bruce Willis returned to the Die Hard franchise for the third time. Die Hard with a Vengeance co-starred Samuel L. Jackson in one of his biggest film roles to date, following his star-making turn in Pulp Fiction. Speaking with Vanity Fair on the occasion of Willis’s birthday, Jackson said his co-star gave him some advice on that set, which he eventually took, even if he didn’t necessarily realize it at the time. The Avengers actor said…
He told me, ‘Hopefully you’ll be able to find a character that, when you make bad movies and they don’t make any money, you can always go back to this character everybody loves. He said, ‘Arnold’s got Terminator. Sylvester’s got Rocky, Rambo. I’ve got John McClane.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, okay.’ And it didn’t occur to me until I got that Nick Fury role—and I had a nine-picture deal to be Nick Fury—that, Oh, I’m doing what Bruce said. I’ve got this character now.
It’s not hard to see exactly this play out in the careers of many stars. Bruce Willis himself returned to John McClain two more times after Die Hard with a Vengeance. He certainly had critical and commercial successes outside of the Die Hard franchise, but there were also plenty of films that failed to find an audience.
To be fair, not all of the movies he made that didn’t make money were bad movies, some of the best Bruce Willis films were not massive hits, but box office success is often a determining factor in an actor’s future prospects. If nothing else, returning to those franchises that audiences love helps keep your name in the public eye, which in turn will keep you in demand as an actor.
Samuel L. Jackson has certainly followed this model. He’s appeared as Nick Fury more times than most actors play any role, making him, statistically, one of the biggest names in the history of the global box office. After his first appearance at the end of Iron Man, Jackson has appeared in 12 Marvel movies, four TV shows and three video games as Nick Fury. Plus, I bet we’ll see him again in an upcoming Marvel movie as he seems ready and willing to play the iconic character for the foreseeable future.
And that’s in part thanks to the advice he got from Bruce Willis.
Willis clearly had an understanding of Hollywood that helped him navigate one of the most successful careers in recent memory. Whatever else fans think of his films, they’ll always remember John McClain.