'I used to be a smart-ass, now I just want to make my baby laugh': Bruce Willis on being a dad again

'I used to be a smart-ass, now I just want to make my baby laugh': Bruce Willis on being a dad again

Action hero Bruce Willis is one of Hollywood’s biggest stars â€" he is also notoriously one of its grumpiest.

Surly, cantankerous and often downright rude off-screen, he made it plain he hated giving interviews and detested everything to do with promoting his movies.

He once told me brusquely: “If I didn’t have to do it, I wouldn’t.”

But what a difference advancing years and a bouncing baby have made!

The 57-year-old Bruce Willis I meet today is polite, pleasant and smiles a lot.

He is more than happy to talk about his new upbeat outlook on life and, during our interview in a Los Angeles hotel, freely admits: “Back in those days I was a smart-ass and hard to be around.”

Time has brought about a big change in him.

His 13-year marriage to Demi Moore ended in divorce in 2000 and there followed a 10-month relationship with the actress Brooke Burns.

Finally three years ago he married British-born model Emma Heming, 24 years his junior, in the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Soft side: Bruce with wife Emma

She gave birth to baby Mabel last April â€" a stepsister for Willis’s three grown-up daughters with Moore.

“My job is just trying to make my little baby laugh,” he says tenderly. “She sticks her hand in my face and pulls me over by the ear.

“I’m very sentimental with my children and I indulge them to a very high degree.

“One of the things that makes becoming a father that much easier for me is that I pretty much stay in shape and I can run and jump and play, and being a father at this point in my life is great.

“I feel like I have the same amount of love I used to have, if not more. I like getting up early and I like looking after Mabel and it’s just very exciting â€" it makes me very happy.”

And being married again? “Emma is just great,” he enthuses.

“Just great. She’s a great mother and she truly is very smart and very reserved and I just love her so much.

“She had a great modelling career when she was younger and you should see her in a bathing suit.”

My girls: Bruce and his daughters

He laughs. “Really, very, very nice in a bathing suit.

“She’s the boss and she’s the smartest of us both and I acquiesce to just about everything she thinks. I ask her opinion more than I ask anyone else’s.”

He has stayed on friendly terms with Moore and remains in close contact with their daughters Rumer, 24, Scout, 21, and Tallulah, 19.

He says: “There was a time when I didn’t quite know what kind of adults they were going to turn into.

"But they turned into really great women and they have great morals and great ethics and they’re also kind, polite and intelligent and I couldn’t be more pleased.

“We always raised them to have their own voices and to speak their minds and their opinions.

"And now that they’re older I hear every opinion they have and I’m pleased with it.”

In love: Bruce with Emma at Die Hard premiere

We are talking because Bruce is starring in a new Die Hard movie, A Good Day To Die Hard, out in cinemas on February 14.

It is the fifth in the series which has earned 20th Century Fox more than one billion dollars since it began 25 years ago.

To mark the anniversary a giant mural of Bruce was unveiled on the wall of the studio’s sound stage 8, where much of the movie was filmed.

“It’s very nice and a great honour,” he says. “It’s just amazing. They say you can see it from space.”

But he adds with a laugh: “It looks a little like Mel Gibson. I’m not sure what they meant by that.”

In the movie Willis returns as an older, yet more world-weary John McClane, battling bad guys in Russia with his son, played by Jai Courtney, 26.

More than 100 cars were wrecked during a chase through the streets of Moscow.

“It’s just amazing to see the kind of destruction the director John Moore came up with,” he says.

“I think we set a new record for smashing cars.” 

Friendly terms: Bruce with now ex Demi

The son of a US soldier and a German mother, Bruce had worked as a security guard, private investigator and a bartender in New York before his acting career took off with a starring role in the television series Moonlighting.

But he very nearly had to pass up the first Die Hard film because of his Moonlighting commitments. “I had been asked a few times to do it and I wasn’t able to, but then my co-star Cybill Shepherd became pregnant and I had a break of 11 weeks so that’s when I filmed it.

“I remember it being really hectic and fast and so much fun.”

He still commands $20million (£13m) and more a film and is probably the canniest actor of his peers.

While Sylvester Stallone, 66, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, 65, stick to the action-heroes, Bruce has subtly branched out and transformed himself into a man for all movies.

After building up his big-screen profile â€" and pay packet â€" with a string of action films such as Mercury Rising, The Last Boy Scout and Armageddon, he took a drop in salary to appear in the hugely successful supernatural drama The Sixth Sense.

Iconic role: Bruce in original movie

His CV of more than 60 movies also includes such diverse projects as the Disney film The Kid, superhero thriller Unbreakable, Pulp Fiction and, more recently, offbeat, Oscar-nominated Moonrise Kingdom.

But he has never forgotten his action roots.

“I have a very warm spot in my heart for Die Hard,” he says.

“Just the novelty of being able to play the same character over 25 years and still be asked back is fun.

“It’s challenging to have to do a film again and try to compete with myself, which is what I do.

"I don’t feel I compete with other actors, I compete with myself and I try to improve my work every time.

“In 2011 I got to do films that were mainly character roles and kind of fun and I had a ball.

"So I want to keep myself happy and work when I want to work and take time off when I want to.”

Die guys: Bruce and Jai Courtney

Willis can afford to take as much time off as he wants, having co-founded the Planet Hollywood restaurant chain and invested in properties in New York, Los Angeles, Montana, the Turks and Caicos and Sun Valley, Idaho.

But he is currently filming a sequel to Sin City and has also finished two others, Red 2 and G.I. Joe: Retaliation.

The Bruce Willis of today is content with his life, and his looks.

“I didn’t use to have lines on my face but I’m happy to have them now,” he laughs.

“I always thought I had a little too much baby fat on my face and I didn’t care for it.

"I couldn’t wait for the time when I looked a little more roughed up.

“There’s nothing you can do to stop the march of time but I’m pretty accepting of how things have turned out.”