Rosanna Arquette Recalls Bruce Willis’s ‘Charm’ in Bartending Days (Exclusive)

Rosanna Arquette is looking back on “gentleman” Bruce Willis and his pre-fame days with fondness.

“He’s just a sweet, good guy,” the actress tells PEOPLE of her costar in The Whole Nine Yards (2000) and Pulp Fiction (1994) ahead of her appearance at the 15th TCM Classic Film Festival, which will open with a 35mm screening of Pulp Fiction in honor of its 30th anniversary.

Though she and Willis have starred in two films together, “I remember him better as being the bartender [in New York City] where everybody would go, to this cafe called Cafe Central, and it was the hang,” recalls Arquette, 64.

“He was the bartender just before he had gotten Moonlighting,” she continues. “Everybody from De Niro to Scorsese [would come]. It was, like, the real hang.”

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Asked what Willis, now 69, was like as a bartender in the ’80s, the actress says, “He had that charm and he had the charisma.”

“Then he got Moonlighting, and then that was it. He was a star,” she adds of Willis, who has since retired from acting.

Nearly 10 years later, the two would star in director Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. She played Jody, the wife of drug-dealer Lance (Eric Stoltz), and he was Butch Coolidge, a boxer who double-crosses gangster Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames).

Aside from Arquette and Stoltz, 62, Willis shared the screen with frequent collaborator Samuel L. Jackson, along with Uma Thurman, John Travolta and more big-name stars.

Arquette says she believes Pulp Fiction stands the test of time for audiences three decades later because “the screenplay is fantastic,” as Tarantino (who won an Oscar for the script) is “such a great writer.”

She also praises the performances of the “great cast,” including Willis, Stoltz, Travolta, 70, Jackson, 75, Thurman, 53, Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer, many of whom have worked with Tarantino, 61, multiple times over the years.

“At the time [of production], we’re just in there, we’re rehearsing, we’re working with a great director, but didn’t realize how huge it would become. Which it really did,” Arquette says.

While she hasn’t been in regular contact with Tarantino as of late, the actress says she “would love to work with him again.”