The news of Bruce Willis’ rapidly failing health shocked Hollywood and the rest of the world, but no one felt it more than his family, notably his daughter, Tallulah Willis.
The Die Hard actor was once a stalwart in the action genre, but after taking a break from acting in 2022, he was forced into retirement after being diagnosed with dementia, or more particularly, frontotemporal degeneration.
According to the Mayo Clinic, the illness affects the brain’s frontal and temporal lobes, which are responsible for personality, conduct, and language.
Tallulah has now come out about how her 69-year-old father’s disease affected her personally, speaking openly with Vogue in 2023.
“My family announced in early 2022 that Bruce Willis had aphasia, a brain-mediated inability to speak or understand speech, and we discovered earlier this year that that symptom was a feature of frontotemporal dementia, a progressive neurological disorder that erodes his cognition and behavior on a daily basis. But I’ve known there was something wrong for a long time,” she said.
“It began with a vague unresponsiveness, which the family attributed to Hollywood hearing loss: ‘Speak up!'” Die Hard messed with Dad’s ears. Later, that unresponsiveness spread, and I took it personally.
“He had two children with my stepmother, Emma Heming Willis, and I assumed he had lost interest in me.” Though this couldn’t be further from the truth, my adolescent brain tormented me with some erroneous math: “I’m not beautiful enough for my mother, and I’m not interesting enough for my father.”
She went on to say, “I admit that I’ve responded to Bruce’s decline in recent years with avoidance and denial that I’m not proud of.” The reality is, I was too unwell to handle it.”
Tallulah went on to describe her experience with body dysmorphia, a mental health disease in which people obsess about their looks.
She expressed that her father still remembers her, regardless of the circumstances, and she now strives to cherish the time she spends with him.
She then heartbreakingly stated that she believes ‘this is the beginning of sadness’.
She explained to me, “There’s this little creature changing by the hour, and there’s this thing happening with my dad that can shift so quickly and unpredictably.”
“It feels like a unique and special time in my family, and I’m just so glad to be here for it.”