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Before Bruce Willis' diagnosis with aphasia and later frontotemporal dementia (FTD), his wife Emma Heming Willis noticed subtle changes in his speech. However, she initially attributed these changes to his lifelong struggle with a severe stutter.
People with FTD can live with the disease but there's no cure.
Willis' family announced in 2022 that the "Die Hard" star would retire from acting due to a cognitive disorder. A year later, they revealed that he had been diagnosed with FTD, a rare condition affecting approximately 50,000 to 60,000 Americans.
"For Bruce, it started with language," Heming Willis shared in a recent interview with Town and Country. But she said those shifts in his speech did not alarm her because he used to stutter as a teen.
Willis' stutter was so severe that it took him three minutes to complete a sentence. However, when he became another character in a play, his stutter disappeared. "Yet, when I became another character, in a play, I lost the stutter. It was phenomenal" he says in 'Bruce Willis: The Unauthorized Biography'. This discovery propelled him into acting.
Heming Willis reflected on how Willis' stutter affected his early life and career. "Bruce has always had a stutter, but he has been good at covering it up. As his language started changing, it seemed like it was just a part of a stutter, it was just Bruce."
She admitted that she never suspected that the changes in his speech could be a sign of dementia, especially given his relatively young age.
On the other hand, Demi Moore is basking in the success of The Substance and according to Radar Online, a family insider claimed, "They're worried Demi is working too much and want her home with them and Bruce. It's not like Demi needs the money."
She opened up about Willis and his struggles on October 13th when she was awarded the Career Achievement in Acting Award at the 2024 Hamptons International Film Festival. She said, "The disease is what the disease is. And I think you have to be in real deep acceptance of what that is. But for where he's at, he is stable."