
After receiving an aphasia diagnosis, Bruce Willis announced his retirement from acting in March of last year. He was given frontotemporal dementia (FTD) diagnosis about a year later. Since then, members of Willis’ family have provided updates on his life, including the 68th birthday party he attended earlier this year with his ex-wife Demi Moore and their three children Scout, Rumer, and Tallulah, as well as his current spouse Emma Heming Willis and their two daughters Mabel and Evelyn.
Moonlighting, a late 1980s ABC series starring Willis, is currently streaming on Hulu. According to Moonlighting creator Glenn Gordon Caron, Willis and Cybill Shepherd reinvented the will-they-or-won’t-they pair on TV for five seasons. The actor was anxious for the world to watch the show again on streaming. “Bruce’s sickness is a progressive disease, and the process [to get Moonlighting onto Hulu] has taken quite a while. In order to bring the performance back in front of people, I was able to connect with him before the sickness made him as nonverbal as he is now, Caron recently told the New York Post. “I know how much it means to him.”
Since Willis’ coworkers on the sets of his most recent movie voiced worry for his well-being before the actor’s diagnosis, Caron said he had maintained communication with his wife and three older children. The fact that Bruce Willis had so much joy in life, Caron said, is what makes his condition so mind-boggling. “I have tried very hard to stay in his life,” she added. He simply cherished getting up each morning and attempting to live life to the fullest because he was so in love with it.
Willis is generally unable to converse as a result of FTD, according to Caron, who also noted that “he now sees life through a screen door.” But he thinks Willis can still tell him apart. He remarked, “In my experience, he recognizes me within the first one to three minutes. He’s not entirely talkative; he used to read voraciously but has stopped recently. He didn’t want anyone to know this. He no longer has access to any of those linguistic abilities, but he is still Bruce. The author said, “When you’re with him, you know that he’s Bruce and you’re grateful that he’s there, but the joie de vivre is gone.”
During World Frontotemporal Dementia Awareness Week last month, Heming Willis, the actor’s wife since 2009, provided her own update to Today. Although Willis’ health is “challenging on the family,” she continued, “there are so many great things happening in our lives. Just so I can see what’s going on around us, it’s incredibly vital for me to look up from the sorrow and the anguish. Bruce would truly like for us to be enjoying what is. For myself and our family, he would genuinely desire that.