10 Ridiculously Manly Movie Characters Who Drip Machismo

3. Bruce Willis As John McClane - Die Hard (1988)

The role that turned TV's Bruce Willis into a movie megastar. In 1988 director John McTiernan€™s bloody, clever, and intelligent Die Hard showed the ticket-buying masses just how bad-ass Willis could be. At the time John McClane was something of an irregularity as far as action heroes were concerned. This was the era of the invincible action star €“ Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Chuck Norris etc - who could literally survive any sort of altercation imaginable. With Die Hard, McClane was a new kind of hero, very much an every-man who screws up like the rest of us but nevertheless exudes the same amount of manliness as his cinematic action counterparts. McClane is a foul-mouthed, wisecracking, straightforward New York cop with an itchy trigger finger, an aversion to supercilious, lower-class European terrorists, and a never-say-die spirit. A true man's man.