Back in 2010, Kevin Smith had the opportunity of a lifetime. He took the lowest-paid directing job of his career so he could work with his Hollywood hero, Bruce Willis. He recalled: “I wasn’t there for the money, I was there for the love. I loved Bruce Willis. And by the end of the process, not so much.”

A year later, Smith shared on Marc Maron’s podcast that directing Willis, who stars in Die Hard 2 on ITV this evening on the anniversary of the first movie, was “soul-crushing”.

The director remembered how the action star wouldn’t sit for a poster shoot and added: “Were it not for Tracy [Morgan, Willis’s co-star], I might have killed either myself or someone else.”

Speaking at Wonder Con earlier this year, the filmmaker even admitted that at one point he was so furious he punched a hole through a wall of his trailer. 

Smith addressed their feud, holding back tears, amid the news that the A-lister was retiring from acting after being diagnosed with aphasia, a disorder that affects the ability to communicate and understand language.

This really touched Smith, who added: “At the end of the day, all I ever wanted was for the guy to like me. I liked him and I wanted him to like me too. Having Mark tell me that he liked me destroyed me, and that’s all I’ve been thinking about for the last few days.”