Bruce Willis's retirement from acting due to an aphasia diagnosis brings to an end a career that had ups and downs unlike almost any other Hollywood star.
There were forgettable lows, box-office disasters, unseen straight-to-video titles, and Razzie Award nominations (two wins from seven noms, plus his own category this year for a third unavoidable win).
But whenever you thought Willis was out for the count, he bounced back with another smash hit, a cinematic classic, an against-type performance, or a colourful cameo that made you remember what made him a star in the first place.
Here are some of the best performances from his illustrious career.
Moonlighting (1985-1989)
This groundbreaking TV show is remembered for its innovation and influence almost as much as it is celebrated for giving Bruce Willis his first major lead role.
Moonlighting's executive producer Glenn Gordon Caron fought network bosses to cast Willis, a nobody at the time.
He was confident the untried actor was the perfect choice to portray wise-crackin' detective David Addison alongside more established star Cybill Shepherd.
Their chemistry helped make the show a hit with audiences and critics alike, as did its genre-bending, tone-shifting storytelling style, which regularly broke the fourth wall and featured everything from song-and-dance numbers to Shakespearean parodies.
Die Hard (1988)
Moonlighting made Willis a household name in the US, and Die Hard, AKA The Greatest Christmas Movie Of All Time, made him a global star.
Willis's casting, while perfect in hindsight, was almost a last resort — the producers wanted the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford, Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, Richard Gere or Burt Reynolds.
But after seemingly every big Hollywood actor turned it down, the role of reluctant hero John McClane, a cop in the wrong place at the wrong time, eventually fell to Willis thanks to a break in his TV duties.
The actor brought his Moonlighting humour to the role, and helped transform action movies in the process — he wasn't a muscle-bound Arnie or Sly, but a cheeky everyman seemingly on the verge of failure at every turn.
Die Hard's formula sparked a slew of copycat films and Willis would return to the role of McClane four more times with mixed results (the third and fourth are great, the second is OK and the fifth is terrible), making it his signature role.
Death Becomes Her (1992)
After the success of Die Hard, Willis was on a hot streak, scoring a Golden Globe nomination for playing a Vietnam vet in the little-seen In Country, and hitting box-office gold with Die Hard 2 and talking baby comedy Look Who's Talking.
But Willis's star began to fade as he appeared in bomb after bomb, among them the adaptation of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire Of the Vanities, star-studded gangster flick Billy Bathgate, and the mega-flop Hudson Hawk, which Willis helped write.
Despite his string of failures, Willis took another risk by playing against type as a spineless mortician caught between two women (played by Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep) in this underrated black comedy from director Robert Zemeckis.
The role put Willis back on top (albeit briefly) but is notable for being unlike anything else in his filmography.
Pulp Fiction (1994)
A couple more bombs followed (the much-derided North and Color Of Night), but Willis bounced off the canvas once again, fittingly by playing a boxer on the ropes, who crosses a gangster by refusing to take a dive.
Willis's small but significant role in Quentin Tarantino's disjointed masterpiece is overshadowed by John Travolta's career revival and Samuel L Jackson's emergence as a top-shelf star, but it showcased Willis at his best.
His Butch Coolidge is a neat twist on a now-classic Willis role — he's the everyman in a horrible situation that goes from bad to worse, but with an added moral quandary regarding the man he considers his enemy.
12 Monkeys (1995)
In the wake of Die Hard, Willis worked with some of Hollywood's most interesting directors — Brian De Palma, Robert Altman, Zemeckis, Tarantino, and Rob Reiner being the most notable.
So perhaps it was not a massive leap for him to team up with Monty Python member-turned-iconic director Terry Gilliam for the time-travelling sci-fi outing 12 Monkeys.
It kicked off a run of successful sci-fi flicks for Willis (see also the excellent The Fifth Element, don't bother with the bombastic Armageddon), and has Willis playing an unwitting hero (again) trying to save the world from a deadly virus.
The best moments are when he gets to play the straight man alongside an unhinged Brad Pitt.
The Sixth Sense (1999)
No spoilers, but M Night Shyamalan's breakthrough thriller gave us a twist for the ages and a quieter, more refined performance from Willis.
Willis won Blockbuster and People's Choice awards for his role, and while all eyes were on the wunderkind performance by Hayley Joel Osment, it is worth re-watching The Sixth Sense for the subtlety Willis brings to his role a a child psychologist.
The film was the biggest box-office hit of Willis's career, topping the US$550 million success of Armageddon the year before by about US$120m.
Unbreakable (2000)
Re-teaming with Shyamalan, Willis plays a man who escapes a fatal train crash unscathed in this cult favourite.
Willis does what he does best, playing the confused audience surrogate unravelling a situation that's getting weirder and weirder (see also The Fifth Element and 12 Monkeys).
The movie spawned an unlikely trilogy, with belated sequels Split and Glass appearing in 2016 and 2019 respectively, where Willis reprised his role as David Dunne.
Glass would be Willis's last major box-office hit before he began his run of direct-to-video B-movies — a run possibly influenced by his recently revealed medical condition.
Over The Hedge (2006)
Willis dabbled with family friendly fare over the years with mixed results - The Kid and North bombed, while his voice work in Rugrats Go Wild is a genuine highlight.
But if you want to enjoy a little bit of Bruce with the whole family, check out Over The Hedge, in which Willis voices a cheeky raccoon trying to deal with suburbia encroaching on his natural habitat.
Willis tops a great cast that includes Garry Shandling, Steve Carell, Wanda Sykes, William Shatner, Nick Nolte, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara and Avril Lavigne.
Well worth a watch with the kids.
Looper (2012)
Willis capped off the end of the '00s with two quality "I'm too old for this schtick" actioners — a lead role in the underrated Red and a cameo in the surprisingly fun The Expendables.
But he parlays his genre expertise to perfection in Rian Johnson's Looper, a high-concept sci-fi flick where a young assassin (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is ordered to kill the older version of himself (Willis).
Gordon-Levitt is the real star, but watching them share the screen as young and old versions of the same character is one of the highlights of this cool sci-fi.
Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
Last but not least is this utterly charming Wes Anderson film, which digs out the softer side of Willis while also letting him do something he does in 60 per cent of his movies — play a cop.
It's a gem of a movie, all the better for having the likes of Willis, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand and Bill Murray give beautifully weird performances, as actors are obliged to do in Wes Anderson films.
After this, Willis rattled out 24 films that never saw a cinematic release, including 14 between 2019 and now, making Moonrise Kingdom and Looper the last truly great performances of a once-great career.
