{"id":97575,"date":"2025-08-26T16:58:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T16:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/97575\/"},"modified":"2025-08-26T16:58:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T16:58:09","slug":"bruce-willis-brain-is-failing-says-wife-in-abc-news-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/97575\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruce Willis’ ‘Brain Is Failing,’ Says Wife in ABC News Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBruce Willis<\/a> is \u201cstill very mobile,\u201d more than three years after retiring from acting due to aphasia and two years after being diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia. The revelation was made by his wife, Emma Heming Willis, who sat down with ABC News\u2019 Diane Sawyer for an interview as part of the new special \u201cEmma & Bruce Willis: The Unexpected Journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBruce is still very mobile. Bruce is in really great health overall, you know,\u201d Heming Willis said. \u201cIt\u2019s just his brain that is failing him\u2026 The language is going, and, you know, we\u2019ve learned to adapt. And we have a way of communicating with him, which is just a\u2026 different way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe actor\u2019s family announced in 2022 that Willis had received an\u00a0aphasia diagnosis<\/a>. Aphasia is a language disorder caused by brain damage that affects a person\u2019s ability to communicate. The family announced a year later in February 2023 the diagnosis had evolved to frontotemporal dementia, writing on social media: \u201cWhile this is painful, it is a relief to finally have a clear diagnosis.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHeming Willis told Sawyer that she first realized something was off with Bruce when he started acting \u201ca little more quiet\u201d in social settings despite usually being \u201cvery talkative and very engaged.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen the family would get together, he would kind of just melt a little bit,\u201d she explained. \u201cHe felt a little removed, very cold. Not like Bruce, who is very warm and affectionate. To go in the complete opposite of that was alarming and scary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThree years later, Heming Willis said there are still \u201cmoments\u201d where Bruce\u2019s personality shines through. She added: \u201cNot days, but we get moments. It\u2019s his laugh, right? Like, he has such, like, a hearty laugh. And, you know, sometimes you\u2019ll see that twinkle in his eye, or that smirk, and, you know, I just get, like, transported. And it\u2019s just hard to see, because as quickly as those moments appear, then it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHeming Willis and other family members have used social media over the last several years to discuss Bruce\u2019s diagnosis. Rumer Willis,\u00a0the eldest daughter of Bruce and Demi Moore, marked Father\u2019s Day<\/a> in June with an emotional post in which she admitted \u201ctoday is hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI feel a deep ache in my chest to talk to you and tell you everything I\u2019m doing and what\u2019s going on in my life,\u201d Rumer wrote in a message to Bruce at the time. \u201cTo hug you and ask you about life and your stories and struggles and successes. I wish I asked you more questions while you could still tell me about it all. But I know you wouldn\u2019t want me to be sad today so I\u2019ll try to just be grateful reminding myself how lucky I am that you\u2019re my dad and that you\u2019re still with me and I can still hold you and hug you and kiss your cheek and rub your head I can tell you stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBruce\u2019s family, including Demi Moore, celebrated his\u00a070th birthday\u00a0<\/a>at the end of March by posting rare photos of the retired actor on social media.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEmma & Bruce Willis: The Unexpected Journey\u201d debuts on ABC at 8pm ET on Aug. 26 and streams the next day on Hulu and Disney+. Heming Willis has also written a book about being Bruce\u2019s caregiver, \u201cThe Unexpected Journey,\u201d which publishes Sept. 9.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bruce Willis is \u201cstill very mobile,\u201d more than three years after retiring from acting due to aphasia and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,16326,447,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-97575","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-bruce-willis","11":"tag-celebrities","12":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}