Posted on 08/26/2025 1:43:05 PM PDT by Twotone
Amid Bruce Willis' nearly three-year battle with dementia, the actor's brain is "failing him," and his ability to communicate is fading, according to his wife Emma Heming Willis.
"Bruce is still very mobile. Bruce is in really great health overall, you know," Heming Willis told ABC News' Diane Sawyer in the ABC special "Emma & Bruce Willis: The Unexpected Journey," a preview of which aired Tuesday on "Good Morning America." "It's just his brain that is failing him."
Willis' family shared publicly in 2023 that he had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, a type of dementia that impacts one's personality and may cause behavioral changes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For the 70-year-old actor, famous for delivering one-liners in movies, the primary symptom is the loss of language, according to Heming Willis, who has written a new book about her family's experience, "The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope, and Yourself on the Caregiving Path."
"The language is going, and, you know, we've learned to adapt," she said. "And we have a way of communicating with him, which is just a ... different way."
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
I couldn’t find the one where he signed “Yippee ki yay” M. Fkers on a Chinook. But here are a few of him and my unit and Platoon Sgt.
https://imgur.com/a/uBNe9oX
The last time we went shopping at Walmart, she was in her mobility chair and separated from me to go look around the store and became so disoriented that she couldn't find her way back. Eventually, one of the employees there noticed her sitting there and took her to the customer service section where they paged me (because, luckily, the ID tag that I made for the mobility chair on the last time we were on a cruise to England was still attached to the chair and showed my name). So, in the future, if she comes to the store with me, she'll have to remain with me and not cruise around the store as she always had in the past.
The hardest part, for me, is have to constantly remind her how to do simple things, like clean herself after urinating, taking her pills, and things that she does multiple times per day.
I know a few people dealing with this now. So tragic. A truly awful disease.
Thanks!
Horrible
“It’s a Chopper baby”.....”Zed is dead”
Thanks for sharing the pics.
Looks like everyone has having a great time.
Never knew Bruce was so giving.
I pray for him and his family.
God Bless.
redshawk.
Worked with him as a “featured extra” for 3 long days on DIE HARD 2 in 1990. On the last day, I was hanging out at Video Village to get a peek of the monitors for some of the takes. Not pushing my luck, I decided to get back to the actors’ corral, so I head down a thin path in the deep snow by the airport terminal. A tall dude in dirty clothes walked toward me and it was Willis. He stopped and stared at me with an intimidating look. I knew to step out of the path, into the snow, and let him pass. It wasn’t until later that I realized he stayed in character the entire shoot... So my encounter was actually with “John Mclane”. Somewhat surreal.
One of my lieutenants was an extra on that shoot.
CC
Cool! Was he on the Denver shoot?
I loved him in Moonlighting.
And he scared the crap out of me in one episode of Miami Vice. Just one episode decades ago is unforgettable (to me).
It’s so sad this is happening to him; he’s one of the good guys.
The 4th pic of him is so good!
Me too. I’ve been a fan going back to Moonlighting.
No, Michigan Upper peninsula shoot. If I recall it was a mild winter and they were chasing locations that still had snow.
CC
You have my most profound empathy. My mom is reaching end stage dementia and it’s horrible.
L
Prayers up ... I’ve read that good progress is being made with treatment improvements for this horrific disease with Ivermectin and FenBen.
Prayers for Bruce and his family.
She says a word supporting caregivers.
You ever been a caregiver for a terminal loved one? It’s every kind of weary,to the bone.
Yep... He had a great smile. I’m sure the pilots said “We might die right now.” Crazy times.
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