OPINION - Bruce Willis’s retirement leaves man-sized boots to fill

Some men are just blessed with an irresistible everyman appeal. Male, female, straight, gay, we understand their currency so implicitly that it shapes the story of stardom. These men feel so comfortable in their fame, so entirely predisposed to being looked at, it’s as if they were guided to it by some strange celestial light. Matt LeBlanc had it for the final three years of Friends; Idris Elba for the first three of Luther; Robbie Williams just after Take That. But nobody embodied that extra special everyman authenticity with quite the fundamental flair of Bruce Willis.