Bruce Willis is not aware of his frontotemporal dementia diagnosis, his wife Emma Heming Willis revealed during an interview on “The Unexpected Journey” podcast (via TMZ).
“I think they think this is their normal,” she explained. “There is this term, this neurological condition, that comes with FTD and other types of dementia that’s called anosognosia, where your brain can’t identify what is happening to it. Where people think this might be denial, like where they don’t want to go to the doctor because ‘I’m fine.’ It’s actually… this is the anosognosia that comes into play… Bruce never tapped in. He never connected the dots that he had this disease. I’m really happy about that. I’m really happy he doesn’t know about it.”
The actor’s wife continued. “He is still very much present in his body… when someone says to me, ‘Does Bruce still know who you are?’ Yes he does, because he doesn’t have Alzheimer’s, he has FTD. He has a way with connecting with me, our children, that might not be the same as you would connect with your loved one but it’s still very beautiful and meaningful. It’s just different. You just learn how to adapt.”
Willis’ family announced in 2022 that he had received an aphasia diagnosis. Aphasia is a language disorder caused by brain damage that affects a person’s ability to communicate. The family announced a year later in February 2023 the diagnosis had evolved to frontotemporal dementia, writing on social media: “While this is painful, it is a relief to finally have a clear diagnosis.”
Sitting down for an interview with ABC News’ Diane Sawyer last August, Heming Willis said that “Bruce is still very mobile. Bruce is in really great health overall, you know. It’s just his brain that is failing him… The language is going, and, you know, we’ve learned to adapt. And we have a way of communicating with him, which is just a… different way.”
Heming Willis told Sawyer at the time that she first realised something was off with Bruce when he started acting “a little more quiet” in social settings despite usually being “very talkative and very engaged.”
“When the family would get together, he would kind of just melt a little bit,” she explained. “He felt a little removed, very cold. Not like Bruce, who is very warm and affectionate. To go in the complete opposite of that was alarming and scary.”
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Watch Heming Willis’ full interview on “The Unexpected Journey” podcast in the video below.
From Variety US