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Bruce Willis’ wife Emma Heming Willis has shared an update on her condition that’s simultaneously harrowing and reassuring. According to Heming, the legendary action star does not know that he has dementia.
During a recent interview, Emma Heming Willis, who married Bruce Willis in 2009, detailed the current condition of her husband, whom she says is not aware that he has dementia — a fact that she is thankful for — and still recognizes his family.
Willis, now 70 years old, retired from acting in 2022 due to a diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia (FTD), which is a brain disorder that affects the parts controlling personality, behavior, and language. Prior to his retirement, Willis appeared in a bevy of direct-to-video films, with reports indicating that his handlers were mistreating him and trying to earn as much money off him as possible while they still could.
Bruce Willis’ wife Emma Heming says that the actor does not know that he has dementia and still recognizes his family despite his illness
“They think this is their normal. There is this neurological condition that comes with FTD and other types of dementia that’s called anosognosia, where your brain can’t identify what is happening to it. Where people think this might be denial, like where they don’t want to go to the doctor because ‘I’m fine.’ It’s actually… this is the anosognosia that comes into play… Bruce never tapped in. He never connected the dots that he had this disease. I’m really happy about that. I’m really happy he doesn’t know about it,” his wife wife Emma Heming Willis explained on The Unexpected Journey podcast.
“He is still very much present in his body… when someone says to me, ‘Does Bruce still know who you are?’ Yes he does, because he doesn’t have Alzheimer’s he has FTD. He has a way with connecting with me, our children, that might not be the same as you would connect with your loved one but it’s still very beautiful and meaningful. It’s just different. You just learn how to adapt.”
In addition to the aforementioned Die Hard franchise, some of the most notable films of Willis’ decades-spanning career were Pulp Fiction, 12 Monkeys, The Fifth Element, Armageddon, The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, The Whole Nine Yards, Moonrise Kingdom, and Looper.