Despite cementing his name as one of the biggest action heroes of Hollywood, Bruce Willis’ reputation among his Hollywood collaborators remains mixed. Following his four-decade-long Hollywood career, before retiring from the realm of acting due to aphasia, the actor has been called out by several filmmakers and his colleagues due to his less-than-stellar work ethic.
Among them, director Antoine Fuqua, who collaborated with Bruce Willis on his project Tears of the Sun, once came forward to express his distaste for the Die Hard star’s work ethic. Even though off camera they remained friends, working with him on sets was a nightmare for the director.
Working with Bruce Willis wasn’t a pleasant experience for Antoine Fuqua
Working alongside Bruce Willis can be pretty hard, as certain filmmakers have come forward to claim that the Die Hard star can be often argumentative, uncooperative, and demanding on sets. And it seems, this was the case during the filming of 2003’s Tears of the Sun, as Antoine Fuqua claimed that Willis was a “pain in my a**”. Even though the two remained friends offsets, filming with the actor was far from easy, as Fuqua and Willis didn’t get along very much. Fuqua explained,
“We just didn’t get along. We got along off camera, but shooting [Tears Of The Sun] we just didn’t get along. Some men don’t gel when it comes to work, you have different work ethics, different opinions, different points of view, different methods of filmmaking, and we didn’t gel. Off camera we were friends, Bruce is great, but we just don’t get along when it comes to work, and that’s pretty much it.”
This isn’t the only instance when a filmmaker has come forward to call out Willis for his unprofessionalism, as the Cop Out director had something similar to say about the actor.
Kevin Smith said working with Bruce Willis was soul-crushing
Working alongside your idol is a dream for many. However, this dream soon turned out to be a nightmare for Kevin Smith during the filming of Cop Out. Even though Smith was a big fan of Bruce Willis’ works, he soon found himself struggling with the production of Cop Out due to Willis’ unprofessionalism. The director claimed that the experience was soul-crushing by stating,
“It was difficult. I’ve never been involved in a situation like that where one component is not in the box at all. It was f**kin’ soul-crushing. I mean, a lot of people are gonna be like, ‘Oh, you’re just trying to blame the movie on him.’ No, but I had no f**king help from this dude whatsoever.”
As a result, neither movie was a big hit at the box office, especially Tears of the Sun. Despite its massive budget of $100 million and comprising Monica Bellucci and Bruce Willis at the forefront, the movie was only able to garner around $86.5 million at the box office.
Tears of the Sun is available to stream on Apple TV.
Source: BBC
