New Delhi: Bruce Willis, a veteran Hollywood actor, previously received a dementia diagnosis. Due to his deteriorating cognitive abilities, he had to stop going to the movies. Since 2022, the 67-year-old actor has remained out of the spotlight. A frontotemporal dementia diagnosis was made for the Die Hard actor.
It serves as a catch-all phrase for conditions affecting the parts of the brain responsible for personality, behaviour, and language. Tallulah Willis, Bruce’s daughter, provided details of her father’s struggle with dementia in a letter that was published this week. The letter was written by the 29-year-old actress for Vogue, whose mother is well-known Hollywood personality Demi Moore.
Bruce Willis’ daughter on his battle with Dementia
Tallulah Willis wrote, “I keep flipping between the present and the past when I talk about Bruce: he is, he was, he is, he was. That’s because I have hopes for my father that I’m so reluctant to let go of.” She also recalled the first signs of her father’s illness. “I’ve known that something was wrong for a long time,” she wrote. “It started out with a kind of vague unresponsiveness, which the family chalked up to Hollywood hearing loss: ‘Speak up! “Die Hard” messed with Dad’s ears.’”
Tallulah added, “Later that unresponsiveness broadened, and I sometimes took it personally. He had had two babies with my stepmother, Emma Heming Willis, and I thought he’d lost interest in me. Though this couldn’t have been further from the truth, my adolescent brain tortured itself with some faulty math: I’m not beautiful enough for my mother, I’m not interesting enough for my father.”
She further wrote, “I admit that I have met Bruce’s decline in recent years with a share of avoidance and denial that I’m not proud of. The truth is that I was too sick myself to handle it. I had managed to give my central dad-feeling canal an epidural; the good feelings weren’t really there, the bad feelings weren’t really there. But I remember a moment when it hit me painfully: I was at a wedding in the summer of 2021 on Martha’s Vineyard, and the bride’s father made a moving speech. “Suddenly I realized that I would never get that moment, my dad speaking about me in adulthood at my wedding. It was devastating. I left the dinner table, stepped outside, and wept in the bushes.”
