Bruce Willis’ wife shares update on his dementia

Bruce Willis, the famed Hollywood actor best known for his roles in Pulp Fiction, Die Hard and Sin City, was reportedly diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The diagnosis was shared to the public by his daughter, Rumer Willis, in an Instagram post earlier this year.

Today, Willis’ wife, Emma Heming Willis, appeared on NBC’s Today Show to discuss her husband’s life since receiving his dementia diagnosis.

“What I’m learning is that dementia is hard. It’s hard on the person diagnosed, it’s also hard on the family and that is no different for Bruce or myself or our girls and when they say that this is a family disease, it really is,” Heming Willis shared on the live programme.

Speaking of receiving the diagnosis, she says, “I think it was the blessing and the curse, to sort of finally understand what was happening, so that I can be into the acceptance of what is. It doesn’t make it any less painful, but just being in the know of what is happening to Bruce just makes it a little bit easier.”

However, according to his wife, Willis might not be fully aware of his illness. She says his cognitive awareness is “Hard to know, it’s hard to know.”

The former actor was forced to step away from his career following the initial diagnosis of aphasia in 2022, before receiving the more official diagnosis of FDT this year. FDT is the group diagnosis for several forms of dementia which affect the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, causing changes in personality, behaviour, language and speech.

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A post shared by Emma Heming Willis (@emmahemingwillis)

His daughter, Rumer, shared a post to Instagram earlier this year to raise awareness for her father’s condition, in which she plugged her interview on The Today Show discussing the matter.

While the actor is no longer working, his hit series ‘Moonlighting’ will make its streaming debut on Hulu on October 25. The series, starring Willis and Cybill Shepherd, originally aired on ABC from 1985 to 1989. The Emmy-nominated TV show will be available to watch in full on the streaming platform, including all 67 episodes and five seasons.