14 DAY TRIAL // A few days ago, Bruce Willis confirmed that “Live Free or Die Hard,” or “Die Hard 4,” was not the last in the series, since a fifth was in the making. As it turns out, only the sixth installment will be last for the actor.
For the time being, Bruce says in a recent interview cited by ShowbizSpy, he’s still in good shape, and able to run and do action scenes – but that won’t last for that much longer.
As he sees it, once production on “Die Hard 5,” which starts in 2011, comes to an end, he will still be able to do a sixth film. After that, he will probably be replaced, he says.
Still, that’s not to say he will be “retiring” from making movies, he stresses, because, to do that, he’d actually have to see acting as a job, which he doesn’t.
“In the next few years they could easily find a replacement for me or call the character someone else,” Bruce says of his John McClane character.
“But for me, I want to do Die Hard 5, then one final Die Hard movie – Die Hard 6 – before finally hanging that white vest up for good,” Willis says.
“At the moment, I can run and I can fight on screen. But there will come a time when I no longer want to do that. That’s when I’ll step away from the Die Hard films,” he announces.
He’ll continue making movies, though, because he doesn’t see it as a proper “job, ” but rather like a passion that will allow him to indulge in it until he’s old.
“I never thought of acting as work, and I don’t look at what I do as work so I won’t retire,” he says.
“There are a lot of people who do work hard, and have really difficult jobs – whether it’s digging holes in the ground or carrying cinder blocks up a hundred foot ladder up to a roof – that is something that feels like work to me,” Willis explains.
In the same interview, the actor, who is now promoting another action flick, “RED,” also explains how he came up with McClane’s famous line “Yippee ki-yay, mother[expletive].”
Producers told him to come out with something for his character to say in a climatic moment in the first “Die Hard,” and this came to his mind while they were shooting the scene.
Useless to point out, the line is now as iconic as Willis’ McClane character.