Bruce Willis No Longer Lives in Same House as His Family as Dementia Worsens

Bruce Willis and Emmy Heming Willis (Credit: YouTube/ABC News)

Bruce Willis is in good physical health, but his brain is “failing him,” his wife Emma Heming Willis shared in a new interview with ABC News.

The beloved actor won over fans with roles in the TV series Moonlighting and the films Pulp Fiction, The Sixth Sense, and Die Hard.

He stepped away from Hollywood in 2022, amid a health crisis and a Los Angeles Times report that he was struggling on sets. Then in 2023, family members announced he was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia.

“Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is an umbrella term for a group of brain diseases that mainly affect the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain” — the parts of the brain associated with personality, behavior and language, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Willis, 70, has been married to Heming Willis since 2009. The actress, author and advocate wrote a new book titled The Unexpected Journey on FTD and her experiences as a caregiver.

She sat down with Diane Sawyer for an ABC News special that aired Tuesday, Aug. 26. Heming Willis said she noticed something was wrong when the normally outgoing Willis seemed subdued.

“For someone who is very talkative and very engaged, he was just a little more quiet. And when the family would get together, he would kind of just melt a little bit,” she recalled.

The couple share daughters Mabel, 13, and Evelyn, 11. Willis is also dad to adult daughters Rumer, Scout, and Tallulah with former wife Demi Moore.

Heming Willis told Sawyer her husband now lives full-time with his care team in a second home near the family’s main house.

“It was one of the hardest decisions that I’ve had to make so far,” she shared. “But I knew, first and foremost, Bruce would want that for our daughters. You know, he would want them to be in a home that was more tailored to their needs, not his needs.”

She said the family spends “a lot” of time with Willis and they often visit him for breakfast and dinner.

Dr. Bruce Miller, a leading expert on FTD, appeared on the special but has not treated Willis. He said the disease is often misdiagnosed.

“This is really the unknown disease. People weren’t aware of it really until the 1990s. The research on this really has just begun,” Miller explained.

Heming Willis said she “panicked” when they received the diagnosis. But Willis did not have the same reaction.

“I don’t think Bruce ever really connected the dots,” she told Sawyer.

Dr. Miller said that’s a common reaction among patients.

“The patient isn’t incredibly aware,” he explained. “The parts of the brain that allows us to suffer and self reflect are lost very early in frontaltemporal dementia.”

Sawyer noted that 11 million people across the nation are unpaid caregivers to loved ones living with dementia and two thirds of those caregivers are women.

Heming Willis shared that she “had to be treated for depression” because of the burden of being a caregiver. She revealed one of her stepdaughters encouraged her to seek professional help.

“I’ll never forget when Scout said that to me. And I thought, ‘Wow. Okay. I am losing it. I need to really get myself together here,'” Heming Willis recalled.

She said overall, Willis doesn’t have any other serious health problems.

“It’s just his brain that is failing him,” she stated.


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