{"id":179463,"date":"2025-08-27T10:22:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T10:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/179463\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T10:22:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T10:22:10","slug":"emma-heming-willis-on-hardest-decisions-amid-bruce-willis-dementia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/179463\/","title":{"rendered":"Emma Heming Willis on ‘Hardest Decisions’ Amid Bruce Willis\u2019 Dementia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEmma Heming Willis<\/a> is opening up about her husband Bruce Willis<\/a>\u2019 battle with dementia, sharing that he\u2019s moved into a \u201csecond home\u201d to get 24-hour care.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe legendary 70-year-old actor, known for his roles in the Die Hard films, Moonlighting, Pulp Fiction and The Sixth Sense, among others, had his Hollywood career abruptly end in 2023, when his family announced that he had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia<\/a>. \u201cFTD is an umbrella term for a group of brain diseases that mainly affect the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain,\u201d according to the Mayo Clinic<\/a>. It can impact a person\u2019s personality, behavior and language.<\/p>\n

\n\tHeming Willis told Diane Sawyer in an ABC News special Tuesday night that she first noticed something was wrong before the actor was officially diagnosed when he \u201cwould always love taking the girls to school, and then those school runs just started to not happen as much.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe continued, \u201cI just thought, \u2018God, that is so weird because for someone who was very talkative and very engaged, he was just a little more quiet, and when the family would get together, he would kind of just melt a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe model and entrepreneur noted that she \u201cdidn\u2019t understand what was happening\u201d at first, admitting she questioned their marriage at the time as their partnership \u201cdoesn\u2019t feel like a marriage anymore.\u201d Heming Willis met Bruce Willis in 2005, but told Sawyer it took two years before she agreed to go on a date with him. They later tied the knot in 2009 in Turks and Caicos, and share 11-year-old and 13-year-old daughters (The actor also shares three daughters with ex-wife Demi Moore).<\/p>\n

\n\tBruce Willis was later diagnosed with aphasia at first, which causes people to lose words, but after his symptoms got worse over the next year, that\u2019s when he was officially diagnosed with FTD.<\/p>\n

\n\tHeming Willis said she informed their daughters \u201cpretty quickly\u201d after their dad was diagnosed, as she \u201cnever wanted them to think that he wasn\u2019t paying attention to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for how the actor is doing now, she shared that Bruce Willis is still walking, physically healthy and seemingly not aware of his condition. \u201cBruce is still very mobile. Bruce is in really great health overall, you know, it\u2019s just his brain that is failing him,\u201d she told Sawyer.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe also noted that she does feel the actor still recognizes her and his family. \u201cI know he does. When we are with him, he lights up,\u201d she shared. \u201cHe\u2019s holding our hands, we\u2019re kissing him, we\u2019re hugging him, [and] he is reciprocating, you know, he is into it. And so that\u2019s all I need.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHeming Willis later revealed that she made the difficult decision to move Bruce Willis into a \u201csecond home\u201d nearby, one that was safer for him and so that he could live with his 24-hour care team.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was one of the hardest decisions that I\u2019ve had to make so far,\u201d she admitted. \u201cBut I knew first and foremost, Bruce would want that for our daughters, you know, he wouldn\u2019t want them to be in a home that was more tailored to their needs, not his needs.\u201d She added that they\u2019re at the second home all the time, spending time with the actor, saying it\u2019s \u201ca house that is filled with love and warmth and care and laughter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHeming Willis is not only sharing her experience navigating the actor\u2019s dementia diagnosis but also the impact it\u2019s had on their family in her upcoming book, The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope, and Yourself on the Caregiving Path. It releases on Sept. 7.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe\u2019s also become an advocate for caregivers, pushing for support for families and loved ones of people living with conditions like dementia. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter where we came from, who we\u2019re married to, that level of sadness and grief and anger and the resentment and all of this, it is one common thread that we all share,\u201d Heming Willis said. \u201cAnd I think that there is something so beautiful in that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emma Heming Willis is opening up about her husband Bruce Willis\u2019 battle with dementia, sharing that he\u2019s moved…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":179464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[9476,101475,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-179463","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-bruce-willis","9":"tag-emma-heming-willis","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115100237540467938","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}