Willis picked up an interest for the dramatic arts in high school, and was allegedly 'discovered' whilst working in a café in New York City and then appeared in a couple of off-Broadway productions. shortly after he was born, and he was raised in Penns Grove, New Jersey, where his mother worked at a bank and his father was a welder and factory worker. Walter Bruce Willis was born on March 19, 1955, in Idar-Oberstein, West Germany, to a German mother, Marlene Kassel, and an American father, David Andrew Willis (from Carneys Point, New Jersey), who were then living on a United States military base. Collectively, he has appeared in films that have grossed in excess of $2.5 billion USD. Actor and musician Bruce Willis is well known for playing wisecracking or hard-edged characters, often in spectacular action films.