Super-producer Jerry Bruckheimer recently told People magazine that Bruce Willis was so generous on the set of their 1998 blockbuster “Armageddon” that he gave money away to the crew to make sure people had some “nice extra cash at the end of the week.” Willis headlined the Michael Bay-directed film opposite Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler and Ben Affleck.
“Bruce is such a good guy,” Bruckheimer said. “He was so generous to the crew. They’d have [cash giveaway] drawings, and he’d throw a lot of money in the hat, and the crew members would always take away some nice extra cash at the end of the week, whoever won.”
Bruckheimer called Willis a “giving guy” and a “good friend.” Apparently the “Armageddon” crew had a weekly cash pot going at the end of each week of production. Willis made sure to increase the jackpot with his own money to make the reward that much greater.
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“Armageddon” centers on a group of oil drillers employed by NASA to fly into space and prevent a massive asteroid from colliding with Earth by drilling a nuclear bomb into its core. With $553.7 million in worldwide ticket sales, “Armageddon” finished 1998 as the highest-grossing movie of the year.
Willis retired from acting in 2022 as his family disclosed his aphasia diagnosis. In February 2023, the actor’s familyconfirmed that Willis’ aphasiawas the result offrontotemporal dementia. Many of his former movie collaborators have praised Willis in the months since.
“I think that he’s fantastic,” Arnold Schwarzenegger said about Willis last May. “He was, always for years and years, is a huge, huge star. And I think that he will always be remembered as a great, great star. And a kind man. I understand that under his circumstances, health-wise, that he had to retire. But in general, you know, we never really retire. Action heroes, they reload.”
Schwarzenegger and Willis both appeared in Sylvester Stallone’s “The Expendables” and “The Expendables 2.”
