Although Die Hard is now considered one of the most successful and influential action thrillers of all time, it is important to remember that its success was not guaranteed. Since the film was technically based on a sequel to the 1966 bestseller The Detective, which was made into a 1968 film starring Frank Sinatra, the studio was forced to initially offer Frank Sinatra the lead role in Die Hard. Sinatra (who was nearly 70 at the time) said no, and few major celebrities wanted to take his place.

After Paul Newman, Harrison Ford and Richard Gere turned down the lead role, the studio found Bruce Willis. Willis was already famous thanks to the hit ABC series Moonlighting, but he hadn’t yet made the big jump into film, and it wasn’t clear he would make it. His first major film role was Blind Date, a 1987 romantic comedy starring Kim Basinger that was a mediocre box office success and received a lackluster critical response. The idea that Willis could star in a big-budget action film that also involved playing a tough cop was yet to be proven.

Still, Willis demanded a $5 million paycheck and refused to budge. That may not sound like a big ask in the days when Robert Downey Jr. was making $80 million from a single film, but in 1987, that was the kind of amount only established stars like Robert Redford could have demanded. Willis’ $5 million demand seemed the height of hubris, as Fox chairman Barry Diller surely thought at the time. “Have you lost your mind?” he is reported to have screamed (according to the NY Post) when he heard the figure.

Luckily for Willis, the studio was keen to get the filming started quickly, so they reluctantly agreed. The result, which seems obvious today, was that Die Hard was a huge success: on a budget of $28 million, it grossed $143 million at the box office, not including the VHS and DVD sales that came later. The film spawned four sequels and guaranteed that Bruce Willis would never have to fight for a big paycheck again. Ten years later, he starred in The Sixth Sense, where he earned $14 million up front and over $100 million total, signing a deal that also paid him a portion of the film’s revenue.

Die Hard also ensured that Willis remained on the big screen rather than being relegated to television like so many of his Moonlighting costars. That was a relief considering his performance in Blind Date seemed to indicate he was not suited to the transition. “Bruce played his TV role, and it didn’t work on the big screen,” Die Hard director John McTiernan said (again, via the NY Post). “When audiences got to see Bruce up close and in higher definition, they didn’t like him. They didn’t like the smart-ass thing.” Turns out they liked the smart-ass thing; it just needed a little fine-tuning.