Bruce Willis was working with directors to continue acting before his diagnosis with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) was made public, his wife, Emma Heming Willis, reportedly claims in her forthcoming book.
In March 2022, Willis’s family announced that the actor had been diagnosed with aphasia, a language disorder, and would be stepping away from acting as the condition was “impacting his cognitive abilities”.
Nearly a year later, in February 2023, the family provided a more specific diagnosis: FTD, a degenerative brain condition that impacts communication and behavior. The family described FTD as a “cruel disease” for which there is no cure.
However, News.com.au reports that Heming Willis’s book The Unexpected Journey, which she describes as being “not a memoir but under the category of self-help”, will reveal how the actor continued to work despite his condition.
“Before making his condition public, Willis had found ways to soldier on with his acting, having directors scale down his dialogue and getting a trusted friend to feed him his lines through an earpiece on films such as Assassin and the Detective Knight series,” the Australian news site claims.
The Independent has contacted representatives for Harding Willis, Willis and Lionsgate for comment.
Assassin (2023) and the Detective Knight series (2022-23) were among Bruce’s final projects before his retirement from acting.
The news site points out that Willis’s deterioration wasn’t immediately obvious because of the stutter he’d suffered from since childhood.
“It’s how I got my sense of humour, because I realised, yeah I stutter, but I could make people laugh by doing stupid stuff,” he once told interviewer Michael Parkinson.
Willis first married actor Demi Moore in 1987, and shares three daughters with the actor: Rumer, Scout, and Tallulah. The couple divorced in 2000 but remained close friends and continue to spend time together with their blended families. In 2009, Bruce married British-American model and actor Heming Willis, with whom he shares two daughters, Mabel and Evelyn.
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Revealing her book’s cover on Instagram in April, Heming Willis wrote: “Born from grief, shaped by love, and guided by purpose, this is the book I needed back when Bruce was first diagnosed and I was frozen with fear and uncertainty.
“This is the book I trust will help the next caregiver. It is filled with support, insight, and the hope needed to navigate this journey.
“This book is for all of us finding our way through the unknown with love, grit, and courage. You are not alone.”
The Unexpected Journey is out September 9.
