When a guy spends 30 years as a private investigator, a terrorist-fighting detective and a doctor who sees dead people -- among other things -- winning a lifetime-achievement award sounds about right. That's what Bruce Willis gets for being Bruce Willis. The folks at the Sonoma International Film Festival will be honoring the actor with that award Saturday. We checked in with Willis, who spoke to us by phone from his New York home.
Excerpts from the interview:
Q: Your first film role was "man entering diner as Delaney leaves" in "The First Deadly Sin." Were you thinking of lifetime-achievement awards then?
A: I can't think of many people who think of awards in general. But it's funny you mention that because it was on that film where the chairman of the Sonoma International Film Festival, Kevin McNeely, and I first met on the first day of working on that picture. That was kind of auspicious.
Q: How did you become friends with McNeely?
A: He was a (production assistant). I was a stand-in/photo double for David Dukes ... When you stand in for someone or are a photo double, there is a lot of waiting and standing around. That's what P.A.'s do as well. We recognized each other as kindred souls and became friends. We ran around New York for the next six or seven years and have remained close friends ever since.
Q: When did you decide to become an actor?
A: It wasn't gradual. It was a very abrupt choice. It was the first year I was a student at Montclair State College (now a university) out in Jersey. They had a great theater department, where stage directors would come out from New York City and help. My first play as a freshman, I realized this is what I want to do. Never looked back. Never considered anything else. I was 19. The role was a small part, Ruckley in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." I changed most of my classes and took all acting and theater-related courses. By the beginning of third semester, I was cutting class to go to auditions for plays out in New York. Got into a play in 1976 and moved to New York.
Q: What was your first impression of the David Addison Jr. character in "Moonlighting"?
A: That part in "Moonlighting" just came out of nowhere. I had gone out to California after I finished "Fool for Love" to take a vacation and check out the Olympics in 1984. I ended up not having any time to check out the Olympics because I had gotten a call from an agent about auditions. One of them was "Moonlighting." I had a typical New York theater actor's disapproval of television. I hadn't watched television for about 12 years at that point. But the script that Glenn Caron wrote, I thought, "I know this guy. I know how he talks." Unfortunately, I didn't look the part of an ABC leading man at the time. It took a while for ABC to accept me. But it was another big turn.
Q: How did it improve your acting?
A: Comedy is a test by fire. Comedy in a weekly two-character series is a huge test. You're either funny or you're not. If we hadn't been funny, the show would have gone off the air quickly. We had great writing. Glenn wrote just about all the episodes the first year. Cybill (Shepherd) and I just clicked. More than anything, we tapped into a sort of screwball comedy that went back to Howard Hawks and Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. ... The first 2-1/2 years were a thrill.
Q: Did the fun end?
A: As with a lot of television, it just becomes cyclical. It's hard to avoid repeating yourself. It's hard to avoid telling the same joke in the fourth year that you already told in the first year. Our audience was pretty faithful, and they started to notice it. The network started to notice it, and the wear and tear on Cybill and me was something I had never experienced. Just mental exhaustion.
Q: When did it feel as if the work paid off?
A: When the first "Die Hard" came out I was starting to hear people say, "Wow. Congratulations. You've crossed over." I didn't know what that meant at the time or how difficult it was to take that step from television to feature films.
Q: You stopped drinking around the time you moved from TV to films. Was there a connection?
A: I stopped drinking just before I got married in 1987. Figured it was a good time to set it aside for a while. Drinking gets in the way of a lot of things. Any kind of substance -- drugs, drinking, cigarettes. It's all bad for you. It gets in the way in some form. But everybody's got to learn their own lesson.
Q: What do you most have in common with your "Die Hard" character, John McClane?
A: East Coast. A marked disrespect for authority. The research I did hanging around cops was an element of their lives that I tapped into. This gallows and black humor of what you do to kind of brush off the horror you have to see when you do that job. It seemed to fit with the character, to have a sense of humor while terrorists are taking over Nakatomi Plaza.
Q: What do you least have in common with McClane?
A: I long ago gave up on trying to correct anybody's impressions of me. My family and close friends know who I am. I realized that there is no point and I have no desire to correct anybody's impression of what they think I am or am not. I don't take that as seriously as I do the gratitude part of still being around two decades later and being asked back to work.
(E-mail Delfin Vigil at dvigil(at)sfchronicle.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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