Security guard became a superstar in Hollywood

                                          

After high school, Willis took a job as a security guard at the Salem Nuclear Power Plantand 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 of writer-director Dennis Watlington Bullpen for four years.