Bruce Willis: 5 More Awesome Performances And 5 More That Sucked

3. Paul Stevens - Friends (2000)

Remember Friends? It was that traditional, three-walled sitcom with audience laughter... and it was genuinely funny and well-written, too.The show was huge to the point that it was able to court massive stars into making guest appearances.

This included the likes of Brad Pitt, Jeff Goldblum and - you guessed it - Bruce Willis. Willis appeared in three episodes in all (The One Where Ross Meets Elizabeth's Dad, The One Where Paul's the Man and The One with the Ring), as Paul Stevens, father of Elizabeth, one of Ross' many love interest. Bruce's appearance earned him an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series, and rightfully so. Here's why it worked:

No matter how many times Bruce does comedy - and even in spite of the fact that he starred in comedy show Moonlighting in his early days - Bruce is an action movie star. There is always going to be a degree of "playing against type" whenever you see Bruce Willis in a comedy and this is magnified tenfold when it's in a sitcom with a laughter track. And he absolutely got away with it. Other than playing to that unnaturally long pause in dialogue after he entered a room (due to the audience cheering for too long), he fit right in with the rest of the cast and just became another part of the show's world.

Much of the genius of Bruce's appearance lies in the casting, though. It's a pretty universal concept that, for a guy, meeting your girlfriend's father can be pretty terrifying. This was made worse for Ross as his girlfriend was one of his students at the college in which he was teaching. You'd be scared enough meeting anyone in that situation, but what if it turned out your girlfriend's father was (gulp) John McClane?

And to give Bruce his due, he really went for it. He was game, and his appearances on the show go down as some of the best in history.