BACK-TO-BACK WILLIS ON THE RISE; SHREWD FILM PICKS PUT HIM AT HIS PEAK.

Byline: Bernard Weinraub The New York Times

Even Bruce Willis says that Bruce Willis is an unlikely movie star. ``When I was coming up, there were guys like Robert Redford and Paul Newman and Warren Beatty - those were movie stars,'' he said. ``I never imagined ...'' His voice trailed off. ``It all got handed to me pretty quickly.''

Willis was speaking several weeks ago on one of the final days of filming for a new action drama, ``Mercury Rising,'' in which he plays a federal agent protecting an autistic boy who has deciphered some volatile classified information.

A week or so later, Willis plunged into making a megabudget action film, ``Armageddon,'' directed by Michael Bey. In that movie he plays an oil driller who is sent via space shuttle to drill a hole in a giant meteor that's hurtling toward Earth and destroy it with a nuclear device. (``It's big, it's fun, it's a larger-than-life thing,'' the actor said with a laugh.)

In the meantime, his newest finished film, ``The Jackal,'' based loosely on the 1973 movie ``The Day of the Jackal,'' will open on Friday.

``I try not to go back-to-back, but who's complaining?'' said Willis, who usually earns $15 million to $20 million a film and knows that any complaints would sound ludicrous. ``My dad was a mechanic, a pipe fitter; he worked around the calendar every year and took two weeks off every year. Am I complaining?''

Blunt, engaging and a bit irascible, Willis, at 42, seems at the pinnacle of an unpredictable career that has been characterized by some surprisingly shrewd choices and performances. In ``The Jackal,'' which was directed by Michael Caton-Jones, Willis plays the title character: a mysterious assassin who has been hired to eliminate a top government official. Seeking to foil him is an imprisoned member of the Irish Republican Army (Richard Gere), who has a history with the Jackal, and the FBI's deputy director (Sidney Poitier).

Except for his part in Alan Rudolph's ``Mortal Thoughts,'' a modest 1991 movie that also starred his wife, Demi Moore, and is one of his favorites, Willis has never played a bad guy.

``I've been wanting to do it for a long time,'' he said, ``because I always noticed that the bad guys just had more fun. Sure, you don't get the girl at the end - you generally get killed - but just as an actor, it seemed so much more freeing. I just wanted to take some chances.''

Caton-Jones, a British director who also made ``Rob Roy,'' ``This Boy's Life'' and ``Scandal,'' said that Willis' intensity and involvement had surprised him.

``There are two sides to Bruce - the savvy businessman who knows you have to play certain heroes, and then there's the artistic side, screaming to get out,'' said the director. ``Of all these action-movie stars, Bruce has the most acting chops.''

Bad-boy reputation

Over the years, Willis has had a reputation as a bad boy on the set. He insisted that this was a dated notion, and Caton-Jones said the actor behaved like few movie stars. ``He would suggest cutting scenes if it moved things along,'' the director recalled. ``He doesn't have the kind of tunnel vision that most movie stars have. He's sensitive to people on the set; he realizes if they're good, he's good. He's constantly trying to break down the barriers that his celebrity erected.''

Seated on the set of ``Mercury Rising,'' which will be released in the spring, Willis was asked if it was weird being a movie star. He broke into laughter. ``It is weird; it's very weird,'' he said. ``Anything singular is weird. You have nothing to compare it to. It's a strange existence. It's not just the money; it's all of it.''

Weird existence or not, Willis has deftly handled his movie-star career, and unlike his contemporaries in the action genre, such as Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, he shows no sign of hitting a wall as he gets older. Sure, he starred in the hugely successful ``Die Hard'' films, but when it was suggested that he was known primarily as an action hero, Willis interrupted immediately.

``What does that mean?'' he said, eyes flashing. ``Let's examine that. What does that mean? I'm known as an action hero because those movies made a lot of dough, but I've done all kinds of movies, all kinds, romances, comedies, dramas.''

Actually, what has separated Willis from his rivals is not so much the types of films he has appeared in but his ironic style, his working-class persona and, perhaps most important, his New York theatrical training, which has helped him avoid being frozen into an acting mold.

He played a haunted Vietnam veteran in the 1989 film ``In Country''; then, in the early '90s, he played a gangster in ``Billy Bathgate,'' a spoof of himself in ``The Player,'' a meek, bespectacled physician in ``Death Becomes Her,'' a forlorn boxer in ``Pulp Fiction'' and a philandering contractor in Robert Benton's ``Nobody's Fool.'' More recently he starred in two science-fiction movies: Terry Gilliam's ``12 Monkeys'' and Luc Besson's ``The Fifth Element.''

Poorly received films

He also has been in an array of poorly received films, including ``The Bonfire of the Vanities,'' ``Hudson Hawk,'' ``The Last Boy Scout'' and ``Striking Distance,'' but he has always seemed to emerge from these relatively unscathed.

Willis was especially criticized in magazine articles for self-indulgence after the 1991 caper ``Hudson Hawk'' - he was a co-writer of the story and the title song. Willis said that the criticism of that film didn't rankle him, but mention of the movie touched a nerve. ``Did it hurt me?'' Willis said. ``It's in profit. Nobody's interested in that.''

Like many people in Hollywood, even the most powerful, Willis contends that he's not thin-skinned, but criticism clearly stays with him. ``The gift I got from `Hudson Hawk,' '' he said, ``was that I don't expect another good review. It would be great if I got the nice press that some actors get without trying, but I don't need it.''

Willis' bursts of candor, coupled with his average-guy appearance, somehow have enhanced his persona on screen. In many ways he's a throwback to movie actors who worked successfully in the studio system, churning out one film after another.

Quentin Tarantino, who directed Willis in ``Pulp Fiction,'' once said of him: ``He's the only contemporary actor who suggests the '50s. Ralph Meeker, Sterling Hayden, Robert Mitchum, Aldo Ray. Bruce has that '50s man's-man look.''

Asked to describe the roles he prefers, Willis paused and said: ``For whatever reason, I'm attracted to guys who are trying to work things out, guys who have problems, guys who are trying to overcome obstacles. Maybe that comes from a blue-collar background; I just don't know.''

In fact, Willis seems to cling to his blue-collar background, despite his wealth, his marriage to a high-profile movie actress and a life that has taken him far from his hometown, Penns Grove, N.J., near the Delaware border. He worked after high school at the nearby Du Pont chemical plant, like his father, then quit to study acting at Montclair State College.

Moment of clarity

``I had what alcoholics call the moment of clarity,'' he recalled. ``I looked at those guys working in the plant, walking in the same steps every day, and I said, `Not me.' As soon as I began acting in college, I felt blessed. I found a home.''

During his junior year, he got a bit part in an off-Broadway play, then dropped out and moved to Hell's Kitchen to be an actor-bartender. For seven years he lived in a fifth-floor walk-up, working somewhat regularly in off-Broadway productions and making numerous television commercials before landing the lead role in Sam Shepard's drama ``Fool for Love'' in 1984.

That same year, he flew to Los Angeles to see a girlfriend, and while he was there he was sent by an agent to several television auditions, including one for ``Moonlighting.'' Competing with 3,000 other actors, he read for the role of David Addison, opposite Cybill Shepherd's Maddie Hayes. Getting that part made Willis a star and led to his playing the engaging bad boy John McClane in the ``Die Hard'' movies, a character patterned after Willis himself.

These days, when they are not working, Willis and Moore spend most of their time with their three young daughters at a sprawling ranch in Hailey, Idaho, a town whose Main Street has virtually been renovated by the couple.

``I don't live in L.A. because it's a pretty weird town, weird place, and I don't want to raise my kids here,'' he said. ``Living in a small town keeps me a lot more grounded, gives me a much better perspective on what I do for a living.''

His marriage to Moore, who grew up in a blue-collar home and is as self-made and self-invented as her husband, has been fodder for the tabloid photographers, whom Willis loathes.

``Stalkarazzi!'' he shouted. ``They target my kids; they target the kids of other famous people. They sit outside your house, try to get in your house, rent the house next door.''

A strong Republican, Willis is as annoyed about politics, lobbyists and taxes as he is about the paparazzi. ``I pay more tax every year than five of the six counties in South Jersey pay in total,'' he said. ``I don't agree with it.'' Has he ever thought of running for office? Willis laughed. ``I did inhale, I took drugs, I smoked dope. They don't elect guys like that, unless they start grading on a curve.''

``Besides,'' he added, ``why would anyone want to run for any political office? I really feel sorry for Bill Clinton and his wife and his kid. The focus they put on them is unbearable.''

Wouldn't being president be a lot like being a movie star? ``It's worse, it's much worse,'' Willis said. ``You know why it's worse? You don't get the dough.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1) Bruce Willis plays a mysterious assassin who has been hired to eliminate a top government official in ``The Jackal.'' ``I always noticed that the bad guys just had more fun,'' he says.

(2) In ``Mercury Rising,'' Willis is a federal agent protecting an autistic boy (Miko Hughes) who has deciphered some volatile classified information.