Bruce Willis was born on a military base in Germany, an army brat, which may have been the perfect background to his action-star career. Not that anyone saw it right away. After graduating high school, he moved to New York to pursue acting, landing a couple minor Broadway parts. The more macho screen roles started coming after Moonlighting, where he played a private eye. From there it was only a small leap to the hardboiled detective in the movie that made him a star.

On this day, July 15, in 1988, Bruce Willis appeared in the film Die Hard, as New York cop John McClane, battling it out with terrorists inside an L.A. office building.

The terrorists John was battling were of German descent: Hans, Karl and Heinrich. Germany did not like the idea of German terrorists at a time when their homegrown Red Army Faction group was wreaking terror in the country , and in their own dubbing changed the backgrounds of the men to British-Irish. This was not an issue in the original Die Hard nor the sequel, but by the third one things got a little confusing when the renamed Hans started reminiscing about his German days.