One of the daughters of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore has written about her father’s dementia in a lengthy essay for Vogue.
The family of Willis, 68, announced in March 2022 that the actor would be retiring from acting on account of his diagnosis with aphasia, a language disorder caused by brain damage that affects a person’s ability to communicate.
In the wake of the announcement, cast and crew who had worked with Willis in recent years suggested there had been signs of his cognitive decline on set. This February, Willis’s family confirmed his condition was the result of frontotemporal dementia.
“I’ve known that something was wrong for a long time,” writes Tallulah Willis, 29. “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.’”
When this unresponsiveness broadened, writes Willis, she then took it personally, assuming that her father was “losing interest” due to his new family: his wife, Emma Heming Willis, and their two children.
“[My] adolescent brain tortured itself with some faulty math,” writes Willis. “I’m not beautiful enough for my mother, I’m not interesting enough for my father.”
Willis continues by explaining that she has suffered from anorexia for four years after periods of depression and alcohol dependency. “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 [but] the truth is that I was too sick myself to handle it.”
Emma Heming Willis recently asked paparazzi to stop taking photos of her husband, because people with dementia can find flashbulbs especially disorientating.
Tallulah Willis added that although her family now finds itself in the “beginning of grief”, she finds consolation in attempting to make her father more comfortable: “It feels like a unique and special time in my family, and I’m just so glad to be here for it.”
She adds: “Every time I go to my dad’s house, I take tons of photos searching for treasure in stuff that I never used to pay much attention to. I have every voicemail from him saved on a hard drive. I find that I’m trying to document, to build a record for the day when he isn’t there to remind me of him and of us. He still knows who I am and lights up when I enter the room.”
Earlier this week, Arnold Schwarzenegger said of his former co-star: “I think that he’s fantastic. He was, always for years and years, is a huge, huge star. And I think that he will always be remembered as a great, great star. And a kind man. I understand that under his circumstances, health-wise, that he had to retire. But in general, you know, we never really retire. Action heroes, they reload.”
