Bruce Willis Fired His Entire Team After Advice to Reject Movie That Won 9 Oscars
Can you imagine being the person who basically robs their employer of nine Academy Awards?
Bruce Willis has starred in a considerable number of movies that have not been of the highest quality, but he is still considered a true icon of cinema that few would dare to argue with.
Movies like Die Hard, Pulp Fiction, The Fifth Element, The Sixth Sense and others have stood the test of time, but the actor has missed out on some big roles, once because of his agent and crew.
Willis turned down the role of Canadian spy David Caravaggio in The English Patient because his agent talked the actor out of working with director Anthony Minghella.
The role eventually went to Willem Dafoe, and the movie was critically acclaimed, receiving 12 Oscar nominations and winning 9 of them.
Such an oversight upset Bruce so much that he fired his agent and the entire team after it happened. Well, it is understandable.
The protagonist of The English Patient is a terribly injured man who ends up in hospital during the Second World War. His body and face are so badly burned that even friends and relatives cannot recognise him.
The only thing he has left is his soul, his memories and feelings. An absolutely hopeless patient, living in an abandoned convent thanks to the nurse Anna, sees his whole life before him like an open book.
The English Patient wasn't the only successful movie to come out under Bruce Willis' nose. The actor could have played Sam Wheat, who was eventually played by Patrick Swayze in Ghost.
The movie shows the character dying and discovering that there is life after death, and he gets to spend some of it sticking around his grieving girlfriend, Molly Jensen.
Willis was offered a role in the movie, but turned it down because he didn't think a relationship between a ghost and a woman would work.
However, the project became a real hit in the 90s. Bad luck, huh?
It is also known that the Die Hard star could have starred in films such as Training Day and Ocean's Eleven, but it seems that Bruce does not regret not being part of these movies as much as in the case of The English Patient.