Bruce Willis dementia diagnosis: Daughter Tallulah reveals ‘I knew something was wrong for a long time’
Bruce Willis’s daughter has revealed how he still recognises her and “lights up” when she enters the room, as loved ones come to terms with his dementia diagnosis.
Tallulah Willis laid bare the impact the Hollywood actor’s illness has had on her family in an essay for Vogue Magazine.
The 29-year-old said she knew “something was wrong for a long time” before the family announced the Die Hard star was suffering from aphasia – a condition affecting the brain which causes speech and language difficulties – leading to his retirement.
She later learned aphasia was a feature of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) – which “chips away at his cognition and behaviour day by day”.
The Pulp Fiction actor – who shares daughters Rumer, Tallulah and Scout with ex-wife Demi Moore – was diagnosed with the progressive neurological disorder in February this year.
Willis wrote the article days after the actor’s wife, model Emma Hemming-Willis, with whom he has two daughters, Mabel, 10, and Evelyn, eight, described the “toll” on her mental health and spoke poignantly about how their time together was precious.
“It started out with a kind of vague unresponsiveness, which the family chalked up to Hollywood hearing loss. ‘Speak up! Die Hard messed with Dad’s ears,'” Willis wrote.
Later, the unresponsiveness “broadened”, she added.
“He still knows who I am and lights up when I enter the room.
“He may always know who I am, give or take the occasional bad day. One difference between FTD and Alzeimer’s dementia is that, at least early in the disease, the former is characterized by language and motor deficits, while the latter features more memory loss.
“I keep flipping between the present and the past when I talk about Bruce: he is, he was, he is, he was. That’s because I have hopes for my father that I’m so reluctant to let go of.”
Bruce and Tallulah Willis pictured at the premiere of The Whole Ten Yards in 2004 Pic: Rex
‘My father’s condition hit me painfully’
Willis admitted she has met her father’s decline in recent years with a “share of avoidance and denial that I’m not proud of” – due to various health issues including anorexia nervosa, depression and being diagnosed with ADHD, which led to rapid weight loss and body dysmorphia.
During her own health battles, the actor was “quietly struggling”, she said.
Recalling a moment when her father’s condition “hit me painfully”, she wrote: “I was at a wedding in the summer of 2021 on Martha’s Vineyard, and the bride’s father made a moving speech.
Bruce Willis in 1999
“Suddenly I realized that I would never get that moment, my dad speaking about me in adulthood at my wedding. It was devastating. I left the dinner table, stepped outside, and wept in the bushes.”
Last spring, Willis saw her weight drop to about 84 pounds (38.1kg).
“The other night, I lay in bed thinking to myself, with an ache in my heart, what if my dad had been his full self and saw me at that size? What would he have done?
“I’d like to think that he wouldn’t have let it happen.
“Whereas my sisters and my mother have these extensive tool kits – lots of psycho-education and interpersonal skills, my dad has never been so interested in root causes, in close examination.
“Maybe he’s a stereotypical father of a certain generation in that way, a doer who, if he had understood, might have scooped me up and said, ‘This is ending now.’
“His style has always been to plug the leak even if he’s not sure why the leak is happening.
“Certainly there are benefits to examination, but there’s a beauty in his way, and I don’t think I noticed it until he was no longer capable of it.”
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Willis is now focused on recovery and her relationship with her father – whose mobility has not been affected by his condition.
“Every time I go to my dad’s house, I take tons of photos of whatever I see, the state of things. I’m like an archaeologist, searching for treasure in stuff that I never used to pay much attention to.
“I have every voicemail from him saved on a hard drive,” she said.
“I find that I’m trying to document, to build a record for the day when he isn’t there to remind me of him and of us.
“These days, my dad can be reliably found on the first floor of the house, somewhere in the big open plan of the kitchen-dining-living room, or in his office.
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“That office has always been a kind of window into what he’s most interested in at any given moment. Recently I found a scrap of paper there on which he had written, simply, ‘Michael Jordan’. I wish I knew what he was thinking. (In any case, I took it!)
“The room is filled with the nick-nacks he has collected: vintage toy cars, coins, rocks, objects made of brass. He likes things that feel heavy in the hand, that he can spin around in his fingers.”
Last month the actor and Moore became grandparents after Rumer announced the birth of her first child, Louetta Isley Thomas Willis.
Angelina Jolie says although she appreciates being an artist, she would prefer for her legacy to be “a good mother” and to be known for her “belief in equality and human rights”.
The Oscar-winning actress stars as Maria Callas in the new Pablo Larrain film about the opera singer’s life.
Pic: StudioCanal
She has called Maria “the hardest” and “most challenging” role she has had in her career and put months of preparation into immersing herself into the world of opera.
Jolie, who recently reached a divorce settlement with actor Brad Pitt, told Sky News: “To be very candid, it was the therapy I didn’t realise I needed. I had no idea how much I was holding in and not letting out.
“So, the challenge wasn’t the technical [side of opera], it was an emotional experience to find my voice, to be in my body, to express. You have to give every single part of yourself.”
The biopic combines the voice of the Maleficent actress with recordings of Maria Callas.
Jolie believes it “would be a crime to not have [Callas’] voice through this because, in many ways, she is very present in this film”.
Who was Maria Callas?
Born in New York in 1923, Maria Callas was the daughter of Greek immigrants who moved back to Athens at the age of 13 with her mother and sister.
After enrolling at the Athens Conservatory, she made her professional debut at 17 and went on to become one of the most famous faces of opera, travelling around the world and performing at Covent Garden in London, The Met in New York and La Scala in Milan.
Callas’s final operatic performance took place at Covent Garden in 1965 when she was 41 but she continued to work conducting master classes at Juilliard School, doing concert tours and starring in the 1969 film Medea.
Written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, Maria focuses on the artist’s final years in the 1970s when she moved to Paris and disappeared from public view.
She died on 16 September 1977 at the age of 53.
Pic: StudioCanal
Jolie on changing motivations as an actor
Maria follows the life of an artist fully consumed by the art she creates and even remarks that “happiness never developed a beautiful melody”.
Reflecting on her own life in the spotlight, Jolie said she noticed her own career motivations change over the years.
“There’s this kind of study of being human that we do when we create, and we communicate with an audience because our work is not in isolation – it’s a connection.
“I think when I was younger, I had different questions about being human and different feelings and now as I’ve gotten older, I understand some things and now I have different questions.
“It’s a matter of life, right? And so maybe that’s interesting that this now is a character really contemplating death and really contemplating the toll of certain things in life that I, of course, couldn’t have understood in my 20s”.
Jolie at the New York Film Festival in September with three of her children (L-R) Pax, Zahara and Maddox. Pic: AP
A family affair
Two of Jolie’s children, Maddox and Pax, took on production assistant roles during the filming of Maria and witnessed their mother perform opera for the first time in public.
She says the film allowed them to create new experiences together and for her children to see her approach to playing a difficult role.
“Everyone in my home, we all give each other space to be who we are and we’re all different.
“I’m the mom, but I’m also an artist and a person and so my family has been very kind and gives me their understanding. They make fun of me, and they support me and just as you’d hope it would be.”
She adds: “When you play somebody who is dealing with so much pain, it’s very important to come home to some kindness.”
Maria is in cinemas now.
Tom Holland’s dad has confirmed his son’s engagement to Zendaya – revealing how the 28-year-old meticulously planned the proposal.
Zendaya, also 28, sparked engagement rumours when she attended last Sunday’s Golden Globes wearing a sparkling diamond on her ring finger.
Neither star has publicly addressed the rumours but Tom’s comedian father, Dominic Holland, has now confirmed the pair are set to wed.
He wrote in a post on his Patreon account: “Tom, as you know by now was very incredibly well prepared. He had purchased a ring.
“He had spoken with her father and gained permission to propose to his daughter.”
“Tom had everything planned out… When, where, how, what to say, what to wear,” he added.
Zendaya arrived at the Golden Globes with a noticeable piece of new jewellery. Pic: Invision/AP
Dominic also noted that while most men worry about being able to afford an engagement ring, he suspects his actor son was “more concerned with the stone, its size and clarity, its housing, which jeweller”.
Tom and Zendaya met on the set of Spider-Man: Homecoming in 2016, when they played the titular hero and his love interest MJ, respectively. Their romance was confirmed in 2021.
In his post, Tom’s father admitted fears over whether being in the spotlight could put a strain on the couple’s relationship.
He wrote: “I do fret that their combined stardom will amplify their spotlight and the commensurate demands on them and yet they continually confound me by handling everything with aplomb.”
“And even though show business is a messy place for relationships and particularly so for famous couples as they crash and burn in public and are too numerous to mention […] yet somehow right at the same time, I am completely confident they will make a successful union.”
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Zendaya rose to fame after landing a role in Disney sitcom Shake It Up, and became a household name after starring in Euphoria.
Holland – who has starred in three Spider-Man films opposite his now-fiancée – made his stage debut in Billy Elliot the Musical in 2008.
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