November 10, 2024, 4:17 pm | Read time: 6 minutes
Action film legend Bruce Willis (69) suffers from a rare form of dementia. He has been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, which primarily affects his speech and motor skills. After his daughter Tallulah mentioned early warning signs of dementia that the family had overlooked in 2023, his wife Emma has now provided further insights into the beginnings of the insidious disease.
February 2023 brought shocking news for Bruce Willis and his fans alike. The Hollywood star has been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia. This type of dementia is considered treacherous because it progresses rapidly, particularly damaging the speech center and restricting motor skills. The life expectancy following the onset of the first symptoms is a mere eight years. This makes it all the more important to look out for the first signs. The patient’s family wishes to highlight these signs. First, Tallulah Willis (30), one of his daughters with actress Demi Moore, reported the early warning signs of dementia in Bruce Willis that were overlooked. In a recent interview, Emma Heming-Willis, his wife, disclosed the speech disorder that first manifested with dementia: stuttering. She also explained why Bruce Willis’ inner circle did not initially find this alarming.
Overview
Bruce Willis’ speech problems started with stuttering
“In Bruce’s case, the disease started in the temporal lobes and then spread to the front of his brain. It attacks and destroys a person’s ability to walk, think, and make decisions,” Emma Heming-Willis told Town & Country magazine. Initially, the dementia impaired the action star’s speech capabilities, manifesting as stuttering, among other symptoms.
Bruce Willis stuttered as a child
What many may not know: Bruce Willis stuttered as a child. This was revealed in the book Bruce Willis: The Unauthorized Biography by British author John Parker in 1997, in which Bruce Willis was quoted as follows: “I could hardly speak; it took me three minutes to finish a sentence. It was devastating for anyone who wanted to express themselves, who wanted to be heard and couldn’t. It was both scary and frightening. But when I slipped into a different role, into a play, I lost the stutter. That was phenomenal.” Emma Heming-Willis recently shared that a teacher had suggested Willis learn scripts as a child. A strategy that helped the boy to master his stammer and paved the way for him to become an actor.
However, the speech impediment never went away completely, his wife now reveals. He had simply become “very good at suppressing it.” The family had noticed in recent years that he was getting increasingly worse at this but were not alarmed. “When his speech started to change, it just seemed to be part of the stammer; it was just Bruce. “I would never have thought in a million years that it could be a form of dementia in someone so young,” says Heming-Willis.
Tallulah Willis speaks out about her famous father’s illness in 2023
In the early summer of 2023, the fashion magazine Vogue published a statement by Tallulah Willis regarding her famous father’s illness. In it, she not only described how she misinterpreted the first early warning signs of dementia in Bruce Willis but also how she is now dealing with his illness.
“My family announced in early 2022 that Bruce Willis was suffering from aphasia, an inability to speak or understand language caused by the brain. Earlier this year, we learned that this symptom is a feature of frontotemporal dementia, a progressive neurological disorder that affects his cognition and behavior on a daily basis,” Tallulah Willis told the magazine.
Bruce Willis’ unresponsiveness an early warning sign of dementia
According to his daughter, it began with a certain unresponsiveness on the part of the actor towards his family. However, dementia was not suspected at the time. Rather, the relatives thought that Bruce Willis was simply having difficulty hearing.
“Later, this lack of responsiveness increased, and I sometimes took it personally. “He had two babies with my stepmother, Emma Heming Willis, and I feared he had lost interest in me,” the 30-year-old recounted. Bruce Willis has a total of five daughters – three with his ex-wife Demi Moore, of whom Tallulah is the youngest, and two more daughters whose mother is his current spouse, Emma Heming-Willis.
Father’s personality change misunderstood
Changes in a loved one’s personality are often misunderstood and taken to heart. In the case of Bruce Willis, his daughter had also related the behavior to herself and thought that her father had lost interest in her. To make matters worse, Tallulah Willis said that she suffered from a body image disorder (dysmorphophobia), borderline syndrome, and autism. Consequently, she was particularly sensitive to her father’s changed behavior, perceiving it as rejection. Rather than attributing this to Bruce Willis, she became overly focused on her own issues. Her father was already struggling with the first early warning signs of dementia.
In the summer of 2021, the symptoms could no longer be overlooked
As the disease initially progressed in a gradual and diffuse manner, his family became ‘painfully’ aware in the summer of 2021 of Bruce Willis’ serious health deterioration. At the time, they were at a wedding, and the father of the bride gave a moving speech.
“Suddenly, I realized that I would never experience a moment like this where my father could speak about me at my wedding. “It was a terrible realization,” Tallulah Willis expressed. She had to leave the table and went into the bushes to cry.
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Since the diagnosis, the daughter can cope better with the disease
It was only with the diagnosis that the certainty of a serious illness behind Bruce Willis’ altered behavior became clear. Now, his daughter is able to provide the attention and strength he requires. “I can radiate an energy that is bright and sunny, regardless of where I was emotionally before,” she explains. By ‘before,’ she refers to her own period of darkness when she was initially overwhelmed with grief about her father’s illness.
“I can enjoy this time, hold my father’s hand, and feel that it’s beautiful. I know that there are big challenges ahead, that this is the beginning of grief, but that saying that you have to love yourself first before you can love someone else – that’s true,” she said about dealing with her sick father. For this reason, she now endeavors to cherish and capture every moment with him. She takes lots of photos with him and even saves the messages he leaves for her on his answering machine. This is because time is limited before the illness completely erases his ability to speak and his personality.