Bruce Willis Sin City Interviewed by David Michael A lot of the time we'd just take out the book, hold up the panel and directly follow the story

With romance (Moonlighting), action (Die Hard), comedy (The Whole Nine Yards) and sci-fi (12 Monkeys) on his CV, Bruce Willis can't be dismissed as a mere lunkhead action hero. It's just a shame that for every The Sixth Sense, there's been a Color Of Night or - dare we say it - Look Who's Talking Too. But just when you thought his vest days were over (sorry), he's back playing over-the-hill cop Hartigan in Robert Rodriguez's comicbook noir Sin City, his coolest film since Pulp Fiction.

How did you meet Robert Rodriguez - through Quentin Tarantino?

No. I hadn't actually met him until he brought me three minutes of Sin City footage to watch. It was kind of a test of the technique they'd come up with, featuring Josh Harnett. My partner called me and said, "Robert Rodriguez has an idea and he wants to show you." I said, "Have him come up to the house and I'll take a look at it." He brought Frank Miller with him and had it on a little DVD. I was working nights and was just getting up, so I was kind of half awake. About a minute in, I hit pause and said, "Whatever happens after this, in the next couple of minutes of this scene, I just want to let you know, I'm in!" Then we watched the second couple of minutes of it. It's just amazing - I could talk for hours and hours about it, and still not do it justice.

Rodriguez has said he approached you as he knew you were a fan of film noir...

Yeah. It's very film noir. It was written during the 80s by Frank Miller as a kind of adult film noir comic, and now Robert's using a brand new technology to get that look across on film - it's remarkable to watch.

It seems very true to the original comicbook.

This is really only the second time out of 60 films I've done, where all the actors paid homage to the writing and none of the actors wanted to change any of the dialogue. Frank Miller, as the second director, would say, "Let's just change this line", but all the actors, would say, "No, lets just say what's in the book." A lot of the time we'd just take out the book, hold up the panel, and directly follow the story.

Your character takes some brutal punishment in the film, but you actually sued a studio after getting hit on the head while filming Tears Of The Sun. What happened?

What happened was the tabloids got hold of it and turned it into a big story. It wasn't really anything other than I was injured and a little sliver of metal got jabbed into my head and punctured a tear duct. After about six months of seeing various doctors, they all came to the conclusion that for the rest of my life, I would have to get steroid shots in that spot every three months. So I got a big knot in my head that would be seen in films. It's just a workman compensation suit - it's not a big deal. It's just the tabloids trying to make something out of it.

You've said that you're pretty disconnected to films once you've finished them, but you're doing a fourth Die Hard - do you have a special relationship to the franchise?

You know, I think that the first one was the only good one to be honest with you. Sequels aren't really new movies; they're another chapter to a movie that you've already seen. Our goal with Die Hard 4.0 is to create a film that if you never saw the first three films, Die Hard 4.0 would stand on it's own.

Sin City is released in UK cinemas on Friday 3rd June 2005.