Early Life
Willis was born in Idar-Oberstein, West Germany. His father, David Willis, was an American soldier. His mother, Marlene K., was German, and had been born in Kaufungen, near Kassel. Willis is the oldest of four children: he has a sister, Florence, and a brother, David. His brother Robert died of pancreatic cancer in 2001, aged 42. After being discharged from the military in 1957, Willis's father took his family back to Carneys Point, New Jersey. Willis has described himself as having come from a "long line of blue collar people"; his mother worked in a bank and his father was a welder, master mechanic, and factory worker. Willis attended Penns Grove High School in his hometown, where he encountered issues with a stutter. He was nicknamed Buck-Buck by his schoolmates. Finding it easy to express himself on stage and losing his stutter in the process, Willis began performing on stage and his high school activities were marked by such things as the drama club and student council president.
After high school, Willis took a job as a security guard at the Salem Nuclear Power Plant and also transported work crews at the DuPont Chambers Works factory in Deepwater, New Jersey.
After working as a private investigator (a role he would play in the television series Moonlighting as well as in the 1991 film, The Last Boy Scout), Willis returned to acting. He enrolled in the drama program at Montclair State University, where he was cast in the class production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Willis left school in his junior year and moved to New York City, where in the early 1980s he supported himself as a bartender at the West 19th Street art bar Kamikaze.
After multiple auditions, Willis made his theater debut in the off-Broadway production of Heaven and Earth. He gained more experience and exposure in Fool for Love, and in a Levi's commercial. Willis also played a lead role in the off-Broadway production Bullpen for four years which was written and directed by Dennis Watlington that was also presented at Joseph Papp's Public Theater.
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