Bruce Willis has been seen in a rare photograph with his family as he lives with frontotemporal dementia (FTD).
The 69-year-old retired Die Hard actor was seen smiling at his daughter Scout, 33, as they sat together on the sofa, while his daughter Tallulah, 30, looked up at him from where she was seated on the floor.
In a second picture, Willis is seen touching noses with Scout while holding a plaque that reads “Best Dad Ever”. Tallulah simply captioned the post: “Grateful”.
In February 2023, Willis’s family revealed the Hollywood action star had been diagnosed with FTD, calling the condition “a cruel disease.” It came shortly after Willis had retired from acting due to a brain disorder known as aphasia – a condition that affects speech and language abilities.
FTD is a rare type of dementia that causes problems with behaviour and language, according to the NHS. It affects the front and sides of the brain (the frontal and temporal lobes) and tends to develop slowly and gradually worsen over several years.
Last month, Willis’s wife Emma Heming, opened up about how the disease has affected Willis in his daily life, such as his ability to walk and make decisions.
“For Bruce, it started in his temporal lobes and then has spread to the frontal part of his brain. It attacks and destroys a person’s ability to walk, think, make decisions,” she explained.
Heming said that Willis’s pre-existing stutter meant that it was difficult for doctors to detect early signs of the disease.
“As his language started changing, it [seemed like it] was just a part of a stutter, it was just Bruce,” she said. “Never in a million years would I think it would be a form of dementia for someone so young.”
“I say that FTD whispers, it doesn’t shout,” she continued. “It’s hard for me to say, ‘This is where Bruce ended, and this is where his disease started to take over.’ He was diagnosed two years ago, but a year prior, we had a loose diagnosis of aphasia, which is a symptom of a disease but is not the disease.”
Willis married 46-year-old Heming in 2009, and the pair share two daughters: Mabel, 12, and Evelyn, 10. The actor shares Scout, Tallulah and eldest daughter Rumer, 36, with his ex-wife The Substance actor Demi Moore.
Heming told Town & Country last month that she doesn’t hide aspects of Willis’s condition from their children Mabel and Evelyn.
“I’ve never tried to sugarcoat anything for them. They’ve grown up with Bruce declining over the years. I’m not trying to shield them from it,” she said, adding that the children “know that Daddy’s not going to get better”.
