Bruce Willis (Idar-Oberstein, Germany, 70 years old) has suffered from aphasia and frontotemporal dementia for three years. Some illnesses that impacted his life: He was forced to abruptly end his acting career and lost many abilities, such as speech. What is known about the evolution of his condition is the information revealed by his three eldest daughters, his ex-wife Demi Moore and his wife Emma Heming, who never wanted to hide what the interpreter and his family are going through. The last to speak out about Willis was her eldest daughter, Rumer Willis, who has already done so several times this year. On this occasion he did so by answering a series of questions about his father in stories from his Instagram profile, where he has 1.2 million followers.
Rumer was honest with users of the platform in asking about her father’s whereabouts and revealed that she doesn’t always recognize her when she visits him at the detached house he recently moved into and that he has a specialized support team assisting him 24 hours a day. It was last September when Heming revealed it in an interview People that she had made “the most difficult decision” of having to move her husband’s house. As he explained during the promotion of his book, The unexpected journeya guide on assistance to non-self-sufficient people which details some tricks that the interpreter used to continue working before his diagnosis was made public: he did so because his conditions, which are progressively worsening, “require a calm and serene climate”. It is there that the actor regularly receives visits from his five daughters and his closest loved ones.
During the round of questions, a follower asked Rumer Willis how her father was doing and she answered honestly: “People ask me this question all the time and I think it’s a little difficult to answer, because the truth is that people who suffer from frontotemporal dementia don’t have a lot of fun.” “I’m very grateful that when I go there (to his house) and hug him, whether he recognizes me or not, he can feel the love that I gave him and I can feel it from him too. That I still see a spark of him and that he can feel the love that I’m giving him,” she revealed on Instagram.
Furthermore, the actress does not go alone to see her father: “I’m grateful to be able to go there with Louetta, to be able to spend time with him and to be able to feel the love he has for me and that he shows me, and to be able to love him and be with him.” In a difficult moment for the actor’s family, they are the ones who honor and remember his legacy, his life and what it was like before the illness forced him to stop. “I feel a deep pain in my chest for not being able to talk to you and tell you everything I’m doing and what’s going on in my life. For not being able to hug you and ask you about life, your stories, struggles and achievements. I wish I had asked you more questions when you could still tell me all this,” were the words that Rumer dedicated to him in conjunction with the celebration of Father’s Day in the United States.
The actor’s latest film project was on the way Detective Knight: Independence (2023), a film that became his farewell to cinema. It was during filming that he began to notice the first symptoms of the disease, which forced his scenes to be simplified to accommodate his cognitive limitations. In fact, they dictated the sentences of their dialogues through an earpiece to hide those first symptoms that were already starting to appear.
His deterioration went unnoticed by those around him, since since he was a child he had stuttered and spoke slowly. His inner circle wasn’t too concerned when his words stumbled a little more than usual. “Bruce always stuttered, but he was able to hide it. When his speech started changing, it seemed like it was just part of his stuttering, it was just a Bruce thing. I never thought it would be a form of dementia in someone so young,” Heming explained in an interview with Town & Country in October 2024.
As his deterioration accelerated, he withdrew from acting and public life. If he is seen it is for the images that his family publishes on social networks or stolen from the paparazzi on the rare occasions when he goes out on the street. Last summer some of his friends confirmed that the actor no longer knows how to read or write. But with him there are seven women who ensure the famous actor has the happiest life possible, despite the limits of his illness.
