Actor Bruce Willis has reportedly paid a surprise visit to the house in south Germany where he was born 50 years ago.

Accompanied by his father and youngest brother, both named David, Willis asked Doris Busch in German if he could look around her home in Idar-Oberstein.

"We were sitting in the garden," Mrs Busch told the Nahe Zeitung newspaper. "My mother still had curlers in."

The actor then visited the Strasbourg army barracks where David Willis Sr was stationed when Bruce was born in 1955.

Baumholder, the military installation just south of the town, is one of the largest concentrations of American combat soldiers outside the US.

Basement

According to the newspaper, the Die Hard star took some pictures but declined to be photographed himself.

Mrs Busch said he was particularly interested in looking at a basement bedroom where he spent the first two years of his life.

Willis was named a special ambassador for Idar-Oberstein when he turned 50 on 19 March.

His mother Marlene was born in the nearby town of Kassel.

BBC News.