Bruce was born on June 22, 1958 in Royal Oak, Mi. (a suburb to Detroit). He has been married for 7 years (Damn!) to Ida Gearon, and has two kids (Rebecca and Andy) and three cats named Carpenter, Edison, and Marina.
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He attended Western Michigan University (for 6 months...) and each weekend he would go to MSU (Michigan State University) where Sam Raimi attended and shot a bunch of Super 8 films with him, which you can still find bootlegged here and there.
In 1979, with his Detroit friends, Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert, Bruce raised $350,000 for a low-budget film, Evil Dead, in which he starred and Executive Produced. Completed slowly over four years, the film first gained notoriety in England where it became the best-selling video of 1983, beating out The Shining. After its appearance at Cannes, where Stephen King
dubbed it "the most ferociously original horror film of the year," New Line Cinema decided to release Evil Dead in the U.S. -
After filming Crime Wave, a cross-genre picture, co-produced by Bruce and written by Sam Raimi with his newfound partners Ethan and Joel Coen, Dino DeLaurentiis agreed to take on the sequel to Evil Dead. Blessed with a budget ten times the original, Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn was released in 1987 with Campbell again starring in and co-producing this "less gory, more funny" sequel.
Bruce then moved to Los Angeles and quickly gained a foothold in a series of independent genre films such as Maniac Cop, Moontrap, and Sundown. He then met his wife, costume designer Ida Gearon, on the set of Mindwarp, a "post-apocalyptic Jeremiah Johnson." Bruce then jumped back into producing as co-executive producer of the biker yarn Easy Wheels and also produced Lunatics: A Love Story, for RCA/Columbia. -
In 1992, Bruce rejoined his old Detroit colleagues and made the third of the popular Evil Dead trilogy, Army of Darkness, which Bruce starred in and co-produced for Universal Studios (the crew members were reportedly paid so little that they also received for their efforts a t-shirt saying "I Worked On Army of Darkness and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt"). Immediately following that, Bruce's Coen Brothers friends invited him to join them for a featured role in their "big business comedy" The Hudsucker Proxy for Warner Bros.
Bruce then made his foray into television, first starring in the highly touted, but unfortuneately short-lived Fox series "The Adventures of Brisco County
Jr.," then as a recurring Guest-Star on the hit show "Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman." With these under his belt, Bruce easily made the transition to director, helming several episodes and guest-starring in the number one syndicated series "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys." Bruce has since reprised his "King of Thieves" character in the new "Hercules" companion series "Xena: Warrior Princess." -
Since then, Bruce expanded his range on television, with appearances on Sam Raimi's cryptic "American Gothic," Disney's TV movie update of "The Love Bug," and a more dramatic turn on the acclaimed show "Homicide."
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Bruce has made the leap into the multi-media industry by supplying the voice of the hero in a CD-ROM adventure game called "Cold-Blooded" for 7th Level.
