Bruce Willis Living Out a Dramedy

“I have this idea,” Bruce Willis says, bounding into the suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

The words and hands are flying, the subject matter seems to come from nowhere: “Forget American troops. Let’s send lumberjacks to Colombia,” he says, stalking the room like the manic, doo-wappin’ character that made him a star in TV’s “Moonlighting.” “Have them hack down the rain forests. That way we see the guys making cocaine so we can drive them out of there.”

The impromptu performance is over as quickly as it starts, and his audience--half a dozen publicists--file out of the hotel room still giggling. “Ah, Bruce, what a character.”

A few minutes later, after a brief photo session, a far different Willis--calmer, more thoughtful and less performance-oriented--responds quietly to questions that touch first on his performance as a withdrawn Vietnam War veteran in “In Country,” then to his offscreen antics that for a while made him the poster boy of the tabloids.

For his role in the Norman Jewison film, Willis had to put on weight, stain his teeth, grow his hair long and add a Fu Manchu mustache. He also forfeited his current salary--driven past the $5-million stratum by the success of “Die Hard”--and agreed to work for scale. He says it was the critic in him that made him do it.

“I had something to prove to myself,” the 34-year-old actor said. “I knew that I had one of these roles in me--an unglamorous character to crawl inside of. I knew that I had it in me to do this kind of acting. It was a little scary, I’ll say that. I had to let go. I had to let go of thinking about how I looked physically. I had to let go of that element of vanity that men in the late ‘80s have.”

The somber film role reflects some changes that have occurred in Willis’ own life recently. Willis’ much publicized drinking exploits got him more attention than he wanted and ended his lucrative commercial relationship with Seagram’s, for which he had done a series of wine-cooler commercials.

Willis said it was his choice not to renew the contract, and he still blames his negative image on media sensationalism. At the same time, he acknowledges a personal decision to give up drugs and alcohol.

“People are surprised when they meet me, as if they expect me to start throwing furniture out of the window,” Willis said, speaking about himself as if his was a life he had portrayed rather than lived.

“I was only wild for a very short period of time. And even when I was (wild), there existed this guy, this mild, intelligent guy. But no one ever chose to write about him. It was always so much more interesting to write about a guy who was wild, carousing, playing loud music. And I think, unfortunately, that has been the perception that has been hammered into people’s minds.”

Willis credits a lot of the change in his life to his wife, actress Demi Moore. The couple were married two years ago and their daughter, Rumer, was born in Paducah, Ky., while “In Country” was being shot there.

“As you go through your life, your priorities change,” Willis said. “In the last five years, I’ve seen it all. I’ve really explored Hollywood and fame and celebrity. And there really isn’t much left for me in that arena. I spent 12 years trying to move my career forward, and I really ignored a lot of the emotional side of my life. Now I’m spending much more time working on that. I have to figure out what I want to teach my child about this world we live in.”

One of the lessons Willis wants to teach Rumer is about the Vietnam War. He says there is a lot to be learned about healing and growing from his “In Country” character of Emmett, a reclusive vet whose tenuous grasp on life provokes him to extreme behavior. In one scene, where a violent rainstorm triggers combat flashbacks in his mind, Emmett climbs a tree and has to be coaxed down by his 17-year-old niece (played by British actress Emily Lloyd).

“I think the potential to overact and to go over the top was definitely there,” Willis said.

Willis’ performance has won generally good reviews. The New York Times said that Willis “does all he can to make Emmett’s quiet tragedy believable” and, addressing the problem most critics have had with him in the past, added, “There is not a trace of his wisecracking celebrity persona.”

“I told Bruce in the beginning that I was going to pull everybody back, and hopefully nobody would be caught acting here,” director Jewison said. “These people had to be very real on screen in order for the audience to slowly lose itself in the family, so we could be moved by them. Bruce gave an extraordinary performance, which didn’t surprise me. I met with a lot important actors who wanted to play the role. None of them had his commitment.”

Willis’ first feature role was in 1987 with Kim Basinger in Blake Edwards’ comedy success, “Blind Date.” He followed with another Edwards comedy, the misfired Hollywood silent-era parody “Sunset.”

Critics who were ready to write Willis off as a movie star got a shock last year when he appeared in the runaway action hit “Die Hard.” Then, they got a bigger surprise when it was announced that Jewison had chosen him to play the pivotal role of Emmett in “In Country.” Willis has a clear grasp on his standing with the media.

“I’ll tell you something,” he said, with a knowing smile. “There would have been many, many happy reporters and many, many happy people in Hollywood if I had failed in this film. If I had somehow not come up to people’s expectations. Because it’s just something about this success that I’ve achieved--that it was almost handed to me--that makes people angry.”

Although success did seem to be handed to Willis when he was chosen over 3,000 other actors for the co-starring role in “Moonlighting,” he points out that he had been in line long before that.

Born in Carneys Point, N.J., Willis cut classes at Montclair State College to audition for off-Broadway parts in Manhattan, where he moved in 1977. In between off-Broadway shows, he moonlighted as a bartender, occasionally pulling out his harmonica to break into a rhythm-and-blues number.

His first TV role was in 1985 as a vicious, wife-beating gun runner in “Miami Vice.” Shortly after that, he auditioned for “Moonlighting” and got the job--despite ABC executives’ protest that he didn’t “look” like a leading man--because of the potent chemistry creator Glenn Gordon Caron detected between him and Cybill Shepherd.

In its first year, the innovatively brash “Moonlighting” vaulted into the Nielsen ratings Top 10 and was nominated for a then-record 16 Emmy nominations. In 1986, Willis won an Emmy as best actor in a weekly dramatic series. And he was front-page fodder for the tabloids, a target for photo ambushes that he sometimes found unbearable.

“One night we were coming out of a screening and my wife was about five months pregnant,” Willis said. “We were surrounded by paparazzi . There were 40 photographers and just this cacophony of flashbulbs. We were literally blinded for a few moments. I mean, we just could not see.

“My wife stumbled, and at that point, I was no longer a celebrity, I was just a man whose wife had been threatened. I started screaming at them--which gave them the shot they wanted with my face all screwed up in anger.”

Once “Moonlighting’s” Maddie Hayes and David Addison “got horizontal,” as they euphemistically put it on the show, audiences began to lose interest. Ratings plummeted and the show was canceled after its fourth season. Willis looks at the show as a four-year education.

“The more time that goes by, the negative aspects of working in that intense, high-pressure format are starting to fade,” Willis said. “Everything else that has happened to me in my career came about because of my exposure in television. It was like getting an acting Ph.D.”

Willis said he is anxious to try some more dramatic feature roles, but first things first. Those who enjoyed him as an action star in “Die Hard” can look forward to the international theft caper “Hudson Hawk,” which is being produced by Willis’ own film company, and the sequel to “Die Hard” begins shooting in November. Also ahead is a second Motown album, due to hit retail shelves this fall.

But at the moment, the focus is “In Country.” Like the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington that is the setting for the film’s emotional ending, Willis said he set out to create a lasting tribute--and Norman Jewison thinks he has.

“Film is forever,” the director said. “Regardless of what happens to Bruce, ‘In Country’ is a piece of work he’s going to be proud of. What he has to say will not be forgotten. It’s there. And we’ve never seen it before.”