Bruce Willis’s wife, Emma Heming Willis, says the actor is unaware of his dementia, which she considers to be a “blessing and a curse.”
The 70-year-old 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.
In an appearance on Wednesday’s episode of Cameron Oaks Rogers’s Conversations with Cam podcast, she explained that the Die Hard actor does not know about his condition.
“I think that’s like the blessing and the curse of this, is that he never connected the dots that he had this disease, and I’m really happy about that. I’m really happy that he doesn’t know about it,” Heming Willis said.
Willis’s lack of awareness of his condition is a neurological symptom known as anosognosia, which can occur with FTD and other types of dementia and prevents a person from accurately recognizing their own illness.
“People think this might be denial, like they don’t want to go to the doctor because they’re like, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ actually, this is the anosognosia that comes into play,” Heming Willis explained. “It’s not denial. It’s just that their brain is changing. This is a part of the disease.”
Her podcast appearance comes after she addressed criticism about moving Willis out of their family home due to the degenerative nature of his condition.
“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 not have wanted their two daughters’ lives to be affected 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.”
