Bruce Willis’ daughter gives heartbreaking update on Die Hard star’s battle with dementia
The Hollywood actor retired from acting in 2022 after being diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia.
Bruce Willis’ daughter Rumer has revealed that her father doesn’t always recognise her when she visits him in a heartbreaking update on his battle with dementia.
Listen to this article
The 37-year-old, who is also an actor like her father, shared the update on her 70-year-old father’s health on her Instagram on Thursday.
The Die Hard star retired from acting in 2022 as his condition - frontotemporal dementia (FTD) - worsened. He has since been moved from his family home to a separate one-story house, where he recieves round-the-clock care.
Responding to a question about her dad’s condition in a Q&A on her Instagram Stories, Rumer said it is a “hard one to answer”.
The truth is that anybody with FTD is not doing great.
“But he’s doing ok in terms of someone who is dealing with frontotemporal dementia,” she said.
Read more: TV presenter Emma Willis reveals she had heart surgery after being given shock diagnosis
Rumer later added that she is “so happy” that she still gets to go and hug him.
“I’m so grateful that when I go over there and give him a hug, whether he recognises me or not, that he can feel the love I’ve given him and I can feel it back from him,” Rumer said.
She added: “I still see a spark in him and he can feel the love that I’m giving, so that feels really nice.”
In August, Bruce’s model and wife Emma Heming Willis said the Hollywood star is still very mobile and in great health overall, but “it's just his brain that is failing him.”
"The language is going and, you know, we've learned to adapt, and we have a way of communicating with him, which is just a different way," she said.
Willis retired from acting after initially being diagnosed with aphasia, a brain disorder that affects language and speech.
A year after his aphasia diagnosis, the award-winning actor got another diagnosis for frontotemporal dementia.
“While this is painful, it is a relief to finally have a clear diagnosis,” Willis’s family said at the time in a joint statement with his daughters, his wife, and his ex-wife, Demi Moore.
Heming Willis, 47, has been open about her life caring for the Die Hard star, whom she has been married to for more than 15 years, and said he still lives a life of "love, connection, joy and happiness" in an Instagram post in March 2024.
The NHS says FTD is an uncommon type of dementia that causes problems with behaviour and language, it says symptoms include personality changes, slow speech, problems with mental abilities, and memory problems.
Willis is best known for starring in films including Pulp Fiction, The Fifth Element and The Sixth Sense.