You’ve probably — no, definitely — seen a Bruce Willis movie.

Maybe it was in 1999 for “The Sixth Sense.” Probably it was 1994 and you couldn’t get enough of “Pulp Fiction.” If you’re a true fan, you might point to “Moonlighting” to really impress folks. Obviously, you’ve seen “Die Hard.”

Over the course of the 1990s and 2000s, Willis was not only one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood but one of the biggest. It wasn’t just “Die Hard” either. Willis moved his way through such comedies as “The Whole Nine Yards,” sci-fi stories like “The Fifth Element” and worked with film auteurs, such as Wes Anderson on “Moonrise Kingdom.”

It wasn’t just the action spectacle, it was the star. Film writer Sean O’Connell posits Willis as the last of the classic Hollywood movie stars in his latest book, “Bruce Willis: Celebrating the Cinematic Legacy of an Unbreakable Hollywood Icon,” out now.

This interview with O’Connell has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: What about Bruce Willis caught your attention?

A: I’ve always been a huge fan, dating back to his “Moonlighting” days. I appreciated his sense of humor. I liked his sarcastic tone that he brought to comedies, but also in the action genre in “Die Hard.”

Then over the years, I just really appreciated the risks that he took as an actor and the way that he kind of pushed himself to work with really talented filmmakers, to explore different genres that pushed him as an actor. … When he announced his retirement, I kind of thought that’d be a really good time to look back over a body of work and just sort of reassess (his career) through a critical lens and sort of prove that he’s more than just the action.

Q: Willis is a guy who would do the big movies but also take chances on interesting midbudget work.

A: The one thing I learned about him, too, while researching his career and going back over those films, is how often he found a script that he really loved or a director that he absolutely wanted to collaborate on and (would) use his star power to kind of work with those people. Like when he went to work with M. Night Shyamalan on “Sixth Sense,” M. Night was not M. Night at that point. He was still very young in his career. When he does “Pulp Fiction,” Quentin Tarantino’s coming off of “Reservoir Dogs.” He’s got some heat, but he’s not Quentin yet. And Bruce takes a chance on these guys.

Then in the science-fiction section, when I wrote about those, both Terry Gilliam for “12 Monkeys” and Luc Bresson for “Fifth Element” say that they would not have been able to make the type of movie that they were able to make if not for Bruce stepping up for them (and) running studio interference because they had a movie star. That guaranteed a (good) opening weekend. And that kind of power doesn’t exist in the industry anymore. No other celebrity or actor is really able to push something through the pipeline the way that Bruce did.

Q: Willis could do a comedy and then turn around and be an action star. He could do a science-fiction movie and then hold his own in a drama. He wasn’t specialized. Why can’t that happen anymore?

A: I think a lot of that is just the industry not willing to take chances anymore, right? I don’t know if we’re going to get a Jim Carrey anymore or even an Adam Sandler. Someone who becomes the brand because the film industry doesn’t do that.

Everything’s cyclical. We could very well go back to what we had in the ’90s, where people were sort of branching out and establishing themselves as leads. But currently, everything has to be a proven franchise, a safe brand they can roll out.

Q: You profiled so many of Willis’ movies, was there one that’s not in the book that you feel is underrated?

A: “The Kid.” It was one of his only forays into doing family comedy. “Look Who’s Talking” was huge for him in the early days, but then after that, he really doesn’t do the family comedy bit. He doesn’t really play the dad in a movie like that, but in “The Kid,” he does, and it’s really sweet. It’s sweeter than I remember, and he’s very funny in it, and kind of upbeat, and it made me wish he did a little bit more of that.