Bruce Willis’ family stated in March that he will retire from acting after being diagnosed with aphasia. He was given the more precise diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) over a year later. Willis’ family members have shared updates about his life since then, including his 68th birthday celebration earlier this year with Demi Moore, his ex-wife, and their three children, Scout, Rumer, and Tallulah; and his current wife, Emma Heming Willis, and their two children, Mabel and Evelyn.
Willis’ late-1980s ABC comedy Moonlighting became available to view on Hulu this month. Willis and Cybill Shepherd reinvented the will-they-or-won’t-they pair on TV for five seasons, and the actor was ready for the world to experience the program again on streaming, according to Moonlighting creator Glenn Gordon Caron. “It took a long time to get Moonlighting on Hulu, and Bruce’s disease is a progressive disease.” So I was able to engage with him about getting the performance back in front of people before the sickness left him as incommunicative as he is today,” Caron recently told the New York Post. “I know it means a lot to him.”
Caron said that he had maintained touch with Willis’s wife and three older children since colleagues on the sets of the actor’s most recent movie voiced worry for his well-being before to the diagnosis. “I have tried very hard to stay in his life,” Caron said, adding, “What makes [his disease] so mind-boggling is that if you’ve ever spent time with Bruce Willis, there is no one who had any more joie de vivre than he.” He liked getting up every morning and attempting to live life to the fullest.”
Willis, according to Caron, is generally unable to speak as a result of FTD, and “he now sees life through a screen door.” But he thinks Willis can still identify him. “My sense is the first one to three minutes he knows who I am,” he went on to say. “He’s not completely verbal; he used to be a voracious reader—something he didn’t want anyone to know—but he’s stopped reading now.” All of his verbal abilities are no longer accessible to him, yet he is still Bruce.” The writer went on to say, “When you’re with him you know that he’s Bruce and you’re grateful that he’s there, but the joie de vivre is gone.”
Heming Willis, the actor’s wife since 2009, provided an update to Today last month during World Frontotemporal Dementia Awareness Week. While Willis’ health is “hard on the family,” she says there are “so many beautiful things happening in our lives.” It’s just as vital for me to look up from the pain and despair to observe what’s going on around us. Bruce would really want us to enjoy what is. He really cares about me and our family.”
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