Bruce Willis’ family shed light on life with an actor amidst her struggles with frontotemporal dementia.
On Father’s Day, Willis’ daughter, Rumer Willis and his wife, Emma Heming, shared an emotional post on social media to honor the family’s patriarch. Neither gave specific details of Willis’s condition, but both suggested that the illness had a blow to the 70-year-old actor.
Rumer Willis spoke directly to her father in her post, saying, “I feel a deep pain in my heart, I’ll talk to you and tell you everything I’m doing and what’s going on in my life.”
“I want to ask more questions while you can still tell me about it. But I know that you don’t want sadness from me today, so I try to remind myself how lucky I am to be my dad and you can still be with you, hugging you, hugging you, hugging you, by your cheek, rubbing your head,” she wrote.
She added that Willis’ eyes were still “bright” when she saw Ruetta, the granddaughter of Rumer Willis, in 2023.
Bruce Willis will be attending the Los Angeles “Hard Die Hard Good Day” mural event held at Fox Studio Lot in Century City, California on January 31, 2013. (Photo: Michael Tran/Film Magic)
Heming, who has been married to Willis since 2009, began her posting with her hoping for Happy Father’s Day “is manifested in all dads who live with disabilities and illnesses, and to children who appear in ways they can and show up for them.”
“What Bruce teaches our girls is far beyond words: resilience, unconditional love, and the quiet strength of merely being,” writes Hemming.
Heming said her love for Willis continued “deeply” and was one of many fathers worthy of praise for him, but he acknowledged how his dementia challenged their lives.
“But to be fair to myself, these iconic days stir a lot. Today is very sad,” she writes. “I hope that in every cell in my body, things are different for him and may be lighter for our family.”
Willis has two daughters from Hemming, but in addition to her three daughters (Rumer, Scout and Tallulah), she shares them with actress Demi Moore.
Willis’ family first announced in 2022 that Willis had been diagnosed with aphasia. This is a barrier that can lead to speaking and processing the processing language. The condition progressed to frontotemporal dementia (FTD) in 2023, his family said.
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“Unfortunately, the communication challenges are just one of the symptoms of the illness that Bruce faces. This is painful, but it’s reassuring to get a clear diagnosis in the end,” his family wrote at the time.
FTD, a degenerative disease, can cause symptoms such as “non-characteristic personality changes, indifference, and an unexplainable struggle with decision-making, movement, speaking, or language understanding,” according to the Frontal Degeneration Association.
Currently, there are no treatments or treatments for FTD, but drugs are effective in alleviating symptoms-related behavioral problems.
