Many years ago, using the weekly TV guide that came with the Sunday Chicago Tribune, I started keeping track of all of the movies I had seen over the course of my lifetime. The guide would list the two main stars for each movie, and that is a tradition that I’ve carried on in my database ever since. Given those guidelines, it is time once again to look at the now 107 actors that have starred in at least 10 films that I have seen, as of July 1.
We wrap up our series today with the lone actor that has starred in exactly 36 movies that I have seen, a new high from three years ago.
Bruce Willis
The actor that I have seen in the most films is Bruce Willis, who maintains a five-picture lead over his closest competitor. I first saw him in 1985’s Moonlighting, the pilot to the television show that introduced him to America. His first big screen work that I saw was 1988’s Die Hard. His longest streak was four years, from 1995 through 1998. I’ve seen him in multiple films in nine different years, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2014, 2019, and 2020. The last time I saw him in a film was 2020, when he checked in with three different performances: 2017’s Once Upon a Time in Venice and, both from 2020, Hard Kill and Survive the Night. Unfortunately, Willis’s family announced last year that he was retiring after being diagnosed with aphasia, a disorder impacting his language expression and comprehension.
