Emma Heming Willis has given an update on the current state of her husband Bruce Willis’s health amid his dementia diagnosis.
The 70-year-old Die Hard actor’s family announced in 2023 that he had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), only a year after they said he was “stepping away” from acting because he had aphasia.
Since announcing her husband’s diagnosis, Heming Willis has been open about his physical health and how it’s affected their family, including their two daughters, Mabel Ray, 13, and Evelyn Penn, 11.
During an appearance Tuesday on the Today show, she told Savannah Guthrie that Willis is currently “doing really well.”
“It's such a loaded question. It’s hard to answer,” Heming Willis said. “But honestly, today, great. He is surrounded by love and care, and he is doing really well with an unkind disease.”
Her comments came after she revealed in an interview with People what the holidays look like for her family with her husband no longer living at home.
“It’s joyous. It’s just different,” she said in the interview published Thursday. “Bruce loved Christmas, and we love celebrating it with him. It just looks different, so we've kind of adapted to that.”
“You have to learn and adapt and make new memories, bring in the same traditions that you had before,” she added.
“Life goes on. It just goes on. Dementia is hard, but there is still joy in it. I think it’s important that we don’t paint such a negative picture around dementia. We are still laughing. There is still joy. It just looks different.”
The interview was published one week after Heming Willis addressed criticism about her family’s decisions surrounding her husband’s care.
“F*** em! As Bruce would say,” she told the audience at End Well 2025, a Los Angeles conference focused on end-of-life care. During the event, Heming Willis joined actor Yvette Nicole Brown, who takes care of her father, to discuss their experiences as caregivers.
The model’s dismissal of her critics came after Brown asked her about the backlash she faced earlier this year when she moved Willis out of their family home due to the degenerative nature of his condition.
At the time, Heming Willis said her husband would have wanted their two daughters’ lives to be unaffected by adjustments to their home, but it did not stop trolls from judging her decision.
“I tell you, when I heard about the house thing, I wanted to throw elbows for you, honey,” Brown said. “Because the thing is, what people don’t understand who aren’t caregivers, is that every caregiver is different, especially if you’re dealing with dementia or Alzheimer’s, it’s very unwieldy... And we all are doing our best and making the best decisions for your family. So when they came for you, I wanted to come for them.”
The common snack that helped enhance memory and brain function in a 16-week trial
Bruce Willis’ wife shares insight into Thanksgiving amid star’s dementia diagnosis
Rumer Willis shares health update on dad Bruce amid dementia diagnosis
Ozempic could be coming for a new demographic – your fat cat
The boyfriend test that shows I should have gone for a maths nerd all along
Our first billionaire king has some tough questions to answer
