Bruce Willis’s wife, Emma Heming Willis, has said she is “profoundly sad” as their family marks Father’s Day while the Die Hard actor lives with dementia.
In February 2023, Willis’s family announced that the actor had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), a degenerative brain condition that impacts communication and behaviour. The family described FTD as a “cruel disease” for which there is no cure.
In a post shared on Sunday (15 June), Heming shared a picture of their daughter, Evelyn, 11, hugging her father, who is looking away from the camera wearing a baseball cap.
The model and dementia campaigner dedicated the post to fathers living with disability or disease, writing: “What Bruce teaches our girls goes far beyond words. Resilience, unconditional love, and the quiet strength in simply being present.”
“This photo says so much. Love deepens. It adapts. It stays, even when everything else changes.”
Heming admitted that she was feeling “profoundly sad” on Father’s Day, adding: “These symbolic days stir up a lot. I wish, with every cell in my body, that things could be different for him and lighter for our family.”
“As they say in our FTD community, ‘It is what it is.’ And while that might sound dismissive, to me, it’s not. It grounds me. It helps me return to the acceptance of what is and not fight this every step of the way like I used to,” she concluded.
On her Instagram Stories, Heming shared a range of throwback pictures of Willis with their children when they were younger, including one taken at the Natural History Museum in London, which sees Willis wearing a pair of Ugg boots with his arms around his daughters. Another picture showed Willis smiling while enjoying riding a swing in the park.
Heming wrote: “I miss and mourn what was. Even those Ugg days. I want it all back.”
The Die Hard actor and Heming share Evelyn and her older sister, Mabel Ray, 13. The pair have been married for 14 years.
Willis has three older children from his previous marriage to The Substance star Demi Moore; Rumer, 36, Scout, 33 and Tallulah, 31.
The actor’s eldest daughter Rumer shared an update on her father’s condition in February, saying he was “doing great”.
She added: “We’re all so close, I think what’s so beautiful is the way that we rally around each other is so lovely because we really are a unit.”
