Bruce Willis has been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, per his family
Bruce Willis was previously diagnosed with aphasia, a communication disorder that affects speech and language comprehension, in March 2022
Aux News Bruce Willis
Bruce Willis has been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), his family announced today. The news comes just under a year after Willis’ family announced he would step away from acting to navigate an initial diagnosis of aphasia, a communication disorder that impacts speech and language comprehension.
In the statement— published on Thursday morning via the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration and signed by Willis’ wife Emma Heming Willis, his ex-wife Demi Moore, and his five daughters, Rumer, Scout, Tallulah, Mabel, and Evelyn—Willis’ family shares that his condition has “progressed,” leading his doctors to arrive at a more comprehensive diagnosis of FTD, a “cruel disease” that does not yet have a treatment.
“As Bruce’s condition advances, we hope that any media attention can be focused on shining a light on this disease that needs far more awareness and research,” the statement reads. “Bruce always believed in using his voice in the world to help others, and to raise awareness about important issues both publicly and privately. We know in our hearts that – if he could today — he would want to respond by bringing global attention and a connectedness with those who are also dealing with this debilitating disease and how it impacts so many individuals and their families.”
Per The Alzheimer’s Association, FTD “refers to a group of disorders caused by progressive nerve cell loss in the brain’s frontal lobes (the areas behind your forehead) or its temporal lobes (the regions behind your ears).” The most common form of dementia in patients under 60, FTD is characterized by symptoms including “deterioration in behavior, personality and/or difficulty with producing or comprehending language.”
As Willis’ family shares throughout their message, love and compassion from Willis’ fan base have been an integral part of his support system. In fact, the family emphasized that they wanted to use the statement to thank fans “for the outpouring of love and compassion for Bruce over the past ten months. Your generosity of spirit has been overwhelming, and we are tremendously grateful for it.”
“Bruce has always found joy in life – and has helped everyone he knows to do the same. It has meant the world to see that sense of care echoed back to him and to all of us,” the statement concludes. “We have been so moved by the love you have all shared for our dear husband, father, and friend during this difficult time. Your continued compassion, understanding, and respect will enable us to help Bruce live as full a life as possible.”
93 Comments
Jesus, that sounds fucking horrible.
It’s somewhat similar to Alzheimer’s, but with more specific symptoms in the earlier stages. So, maybe not as bad initially, because the patient retains certain cognitive abilities. But like Alzheimer’s, everything start to go towards the end.
This article goes in detail as to what someone suffering from FTD goes through. Heartbreaking but fascinating read.https://www.wired.com/story/lee-holloway-devastating-decline-brilliant-young-coder/
It’s one of those things that makes you ask yourself: would you rather live with this or just be dead? I guess it depends on the severity of ones dementia.
Or one’s entire outlook on life.
We all react to things differently – what’s unbearable to one person is bearable to someone else.
This is awful. Poor guy. In his prime, he was a true talent full of charisma.I do wonder if the decline in his career is related to this progressive condition, like he wasn’t fit to take on leading roles in bigger projects.
I thought I read somewhere also that his roles in recent years were chosen more on the basis of just acting while he still can, so it looked like more quantity over quality.
The thing is, he’s been doing this for more than a few years. Look at his credits after Looper, and keep in mind, that was 2012.
Yep, that’s my understanding. He reportedly charged one million per role, and did as much as he could in the last couple years to bank money for his family.
Terrible mentality. Oh well, my thots & prayers are w/ him
It’s not so much the filming of the projects. With a big production they can take their time, edit lots, make lots of takes. They probably could have hidden his condition for longer.
Big productions however require promotion. Talk shows. Interviews. Public appearances. None of which poor Bruce would have been remotely fit to do and the studios aren’t going to hire a leading man who can’t sell their product. The alternative was to earn half a million here and there doing DTV stuff. A few days of work for a reasonable payday and no extras.
As an aside, Bruce and Demi are definite divorce goals. To remain that close despite splitting is something to aspire to.
He took every role that didn’t run from him, probably to bank as much cash as possible. And then, either by his management or whoever this new wife is after Demi, he was being trotted out with little to no knowledge of what he was doing.
This is almost as sad as the diagnosis.
Other way around. He was doing this *before* he couldn’t so he could bank as much as he could for his family.
Wasn’t it all Russian/Far Eastern stuff? A million dollars and 1 day on set were his specifications (seriously). Good work if you can get it.
With frontotemporal dementia, he was probably aware, he just loses his ability to express himself.
Yeah, he got Stan Lee’ed for sure.
Yes, please make definitive declarations as if you’ve got a FUCKING CLUE.
He was taking whatever jobs he could, while he could, to build a nest egg for his family upon his retirement/passing.
I seriously wonder/worry his agent signed him up for all these shitty direct to video movies in an effort for a quick cash in.
RLM noted in some of the straight-to-streaming releases, Willis not only has very few lines, but can be seen with a hidden earbud in one of his ears. They deduced that he was being fed lines during the shot, which explained why his delivery in such examples seemed to be out of the context of the film — tonally incongruent, as if Willis didn’t understand what he was saying, or who he was saying it to.It feels a bit unseemly to take advantage of fans’ good faith by cranking out shit movies to make a quick buck off of ‘em. One would hope he’d already had enough in the bank from a long career of blockbusters, and good financial management. But perhaps his finances hit rock bottom, for whatever reason, and so desperate times called for desperate measures. The clock was ticking, and Willis did what he could to bring in as much money as possible, before he was no longer able to.
It’s a tough situation all around.
On one hand, there’s the possibility that his management team/relations were doing this without his knowledge or any serious consent by him, knowing that the days of being the main breadwinner in the family we’re dying down.
On the other hand, there’s also the possibility that, as much as he could be, he was aware of how quickly he was deteriorating, and wanted to do as much of what he presumably loved doing before it became impossible for him to do so, which is rather sad yet admirable, because so many people with various forms of mental deteriorations have no idea of how quickly they’re going until it’s too late.
Personally, I think it’s the latter, because financially Bruce was set. He invested well in real estate, the Die Hard movies earn major residuals, and even the cheesiest of movies still pay well for an A-Lister like him (in fact, most of those direct-to-video movies get financing solely on the lead performer garnering foreign investors, and much of the budget goes to their fee). Let’s not forget that Glass only came out 4 years ago, so it’s not as though Bruce has been putting on Steven Seagal-level schlock for the past two decades.
wow, I forgot Glass was that recent
Yeah, it’s crazy.
It does make you wonder, however, if some of the narrative choice in the movie (namely it essentially taking place in one location and most scenes involving the main characters sitting down and talking) was done by M. Night as an accomodation to Bruce, presuming of course he had begun to experience symptoms at that point. It was certainly a major area of criticism (especially with the physicality that Split had), so if was the case, kudos to M. Night for doing something that might have made the movie worse, but still allowed the movie to happen with Bruce.
It almost certainly was a deliberate choice. Insiders have claimed Willis was already very far gone while making Glass and the reason why he wears a hooded raincoat for most of the movie is to make it easier to swap him out with stand-ins, ADR his lines, feed him lines via earpiece, etc.
That makes sense, although it is convenient that his character, dating back to Unbreakable, wore a hooded raincoat (as his character is notoriously weak to water, hence him drowning in the end), so that was certainly more of an unfortunate coincidence that worked in everyone’s favor. The earpieces and everything certainly tracks.
I’d been wondering about that this morning too.I remember his cameo at the end of Split and all the press in the lead-up to Glass being made was about this grand confrontation between Willis’ character and McAvoy.Then when you watch it, he’s only really in it for brief bits and barely an active participant in the action before coming back at the end and getting killed.I remember being confused after coming out of the cinema wondering why it wasn’t at all like it had been suggested to be.
“Willis was already very far gone while making Glass and the reason why he wears a hooded raincoat for most of the movie”
So, you haven’t seen the movie. Keep talking though, dickhead.
Looking at his filmography it looks like Death Wish was one of his last films as a lead with him walking around, and it also (as the guy below notes) has him wearing a hoodie a lot…Eli Roth seems like a bad dude so I’m not surprised he’d have been okay with it
Edit: nvm
I read an article about those direct-to-video schlockfests that Willis (and other actors) have been doing. It was written before any of his condition was known, but the gist was basically this:You get Bruce Willis to appear in your movie. You can sell it as a Bruce Willis movie, but his name in the banner, his face on the poster. But Bruce will show up for exactly one day of filming for a bundle of cash, so use your time wisely.Rinse, repeat. An extremely high profitability ratio for Mr. Willis and unearned cachet for those Ed Wood-level auteurs.
Rinse, repeat. An extremely high profitability ratio for Mr. Willis and unearned cachet for those Ed Wood-level auteurs.It’s even less about the cachet and more about the long-term profitability of those films.
Sure, Bruce (and other big actors who do this) get a big payday, but the money is made through the foreign distribution deals and long-term streaming rights. Since they don’t have to worry about paying a cut to a theater chain, and since the production company/studio often functions as the distributor as well (so no paying a big percentage to a third-party distro), their profit expectations on the sale of the direct-to-video/streaming rights are incredibly high because they know, aside from the A-list actors fee, you have a small-budget film that’ll get a decent payday from smaller channels and streaming services who can’t necessarily afford to get the latest $300m+ blockbuster on their service.
Yes. Financial cachet as opposed to artistic cachet. That’s what I meant (even if I didn’t express it that way at all and you summed it up perfectly.)
The care needed would bankrupt richer people than him
That’s precisely what happened, to the point that it seemed like some producers were taking advantage of him and just marching him before the cameras. He agreed to the roles, but it was apparently often a tough thing to watch.
A close friend just had to go through about 4 years of dealing with her grandma’s dementia, so I know it’s an amazingly hard thing for everyone involved. At least he has a whole bunch of money as far as paying for care(which costs a fucking fortune) but that only makes it slightly easier for his family, seeing someone you love turn into a completely different person is a trying experience at best.
Fuck
Keep fighting !
I swear, that condition strikes me as worse than dying. To sit there and know your mind is going—your sense of self—is evaporating…ugh. That’s a disease too horrible for anyone to suffer and it’s truly awful that it’s affecting Willis. My hat is off to the actor.
One of the last truly lucid things my mom said before the vascular dementia came on like a fucking category 5 storm, was that she was really scared about what was happing to her and her memory.
My dad has both; it fucking SUCKS. I really feel for his family.
Sorry for your father and family as well. Nobody should have to go through that, and I hope you all are doing as well as you can under the circumstances.
Thank you. 🙂
It really does. My mother in law has it (after first showing symptoms during the original March 2020 lockdown) and has gone downhill really quickly in the past six months. She was such a gentle and lovely lady and it’s so awful to see how fast she’s deteriorated and the pain and sadness it has brought to the family.
This runs in my family on my Dad’s side, and I was just talking to my son (as in right before I read this) who turns 30 tomorrow that our family ages well – except for the dementia. I’ve seen some family members deal with it better than others, but it’s heartbreaking no matter what.My sisters and I are sure at least one of the three of us will experience this. My heart goes out to you and your father.
Mom has vascular dementia, and it’s fucking horrible. Mom has long since fled the building, but the meat hasn’t figured it out yet and died.Say what you will about Bruce’s career (it’s a minefield at best – not counting the Direct to Video cash grabs the last couple of years, of course), nobody deserves to go out like that.
That’s a good way of putting it. 🙂
Which? That Bruce Willis’ career is a minefield or that dementia is where the person’s has checked out but the meat hasn’t caught up yet?(Arguably, both are true 🙂 )
About the meat not catching up to the mind yet.
This sort of thing scares me way more than any other malady, like cancer or congestive heart failure. I can really understand why Robin Williams chose to not put his family through it. I would certainly consider it as well.
For sure!
He was probably one of those guys who figured he’d vacuum up all the easy paycheck roles, and later, after his leading man days were over, would pursue “art.” Enjoy praise while enjoying good wine and wives #3 & maybe a #4. Then life happened. Fortunately for all involved there seems to be a committed family unit around him, ‘cause taking care of a physically fit adult male with dementia is not for the faith of heart. My great-aunt with dementia would brawl with her caretaker, her husband. Who she adored. She was in her 80’s, but also about was 6ft tall, career military, and grew up street fighting with her even bigger brothers. At one point we were afraid she’d accidentally kill my uncle who was insistent on taking care of her at home. In the end, they went into care facilities and things settled down to the other horrors of dementia. That poor family.
“cause taking care of a physically fit adult male with dementia is not for the faith of heart.” Very sad agree. My great-grandfather was an incredibly gentle man who raised 3 stepkids as his own (including my grandmother) and wouldn’t hurt a fly, but after he developed Alzheimer’s, he was a real handful. Even though he was an old man, he was still a very powerful, imposingly built guy, and if you didn’t know him, it wasn’t immediately obvious that something was wrong. He’d get in fights in grocery stores, slapped one of his beloved stepkids for getting the mail, wanted to fight his son-in-laws any time they came to visit, and got into a shoving match with his very tiny wife whom he absolutely adored. They somehow managed to keep him at home until he passed away from a heart attack, but it was really stressful on the family trying to prevent him from hurting himself or hurting anyone else. By the end, he couldn’t even go anywhere for fear of him unwittingly provoking an altercation, and visitors to the house were pretty few and far between.
“He was probably one of those guys who figured he’d vacuum up all the easy paycheck roles, and later, after his leading man days were over, would pursue “art.”
You can just say you’re not familiar with his career instead of being a cunt asshole who thinks they know shit they know NOTHING about.
Fuck you, fuck off, leave the guy alone, then fuck yourself.
Shitty disease that’s going to rob someone as charismatic as him of his entire personality.
This sucks. You don’t want to see anyone go through this.
Especially not Bruce Willis
If you want a smile and to remember the good times, there’s never a bad time to revisit “12 Monkeys” — also, he appeared uncredited with Paul Newman in “Nobody’s Fool” and if you look behind Paul Newman in The Verdict during his big final speech (which reportedly they had to do two full days in a row because of a fucking hair in the gate: check the gate!) you can see Willis as an extra in the courtroom
The Last Boy Scout is another good one I never hear anyone mention. Not a perfect movie but I remember it fondly.
Red, Whole Nine Yards, Last Man Standing. All underrated Willis vehicles.
Red and Red 2 are the rare films where there is an “over-loaded” cast of big name stars and the film holds up as a worthy piece of work.
I never saw Red. Worth watching I guess?
Absolutely. The sequel wasn’t as good for me, but the first one is a lot of fun.
On my ToWatch list.
I LOVE The Last Boy Scout!
Love that movie. “Water is wet, the sky is blue, women have secrets … who gives a fuck?”
Why did Milo cross the road?
“Because his dick was stuck in a chicken!”
In what way is it not perfect?
He’s gives a wonderful comedic performance in Death Becomes Her, which is a movie I feel like people don’t talk about as much as they should. There’s a quiet scene at a bar where he innocently lets some dark stuff slip that’s hilarious. And he does a world-class double-take at one point. He’s just funny throughout it, though. Between that and Moonlighting (something else more people should talk about), I always wished he would have done more comedy.
Great, great movie. I’ve always loved it.
Oh my goodness, yes—Death Becomes Her is comedy gold. I love when Ernest goes apeshit over Madeline Ashton’s absolute crap performance is SONGBIRD!
His desperate whiny nebbishness throughout that film is honestly Oscar worthy:
“*manhandling doctor* Where did you put my wife?!”
“Sh-she’s dead, sir, they took here to the morgue!”
“The MORGUE?!?! …She’ll be FURIOUS!”
I feel like I’ve heard that movie come up a lot lately, seems like it is being reassessedAlso, can’t forget him in Moonrise Kingdom, and that he did movies like Looper and Sixth Sense which were not sure things…he was more adventurous than he is given credit, because he just made so damn many movies
When Die Hard first came out, it was hard to buy the funny guy from Moonlighting as an action hero.It seems like nowadays, Moonlighting only gets mentioned as an example of TV shows ruining their sexual tension by consummating it. I think people talk about it and don’t even know who was on it.
I think that Moonlighting basically invented sexual tension as the main theme of the show.
I never really got into his movies, but I will always have a soft spot for him from “Moonlighting.”
I had totally forgotten about him.
I’ll add, I’m sorry this has happened to him (and to his family.) I’ll have to read up on it, but does this have the same protein/plaque symptoms in the brain that Alzheimer’s seems to have?
This is the same condition that Terry Jones from Monty Python died from. Michael Palin’s FB updates on his interactions with Jones were heartbreaking.
In a better world he’s just wrapped filming Hudson Hawk V.
That’s a damn shame. My grandma had this and it got rough near the end. My prayers go out to the whole family since it’s a condition that ends up affecting everyone around the one that has the disease.
I recently rewatched Death Becomes Her, and the movie’s ending where Willis’ character is said to have achieved immortality through his legacy of beloved family and good works is so much more moving and meaningful now.
Most of the publicity around dementia is focused on Alzheimer’s, but there are so many other times. Robin Williams had Lewy Body Dementia and that caused a lot of hallucinations, unfortunately. I hope that Bruce can get great care so the end of his life is peaceful.
My Grandfather had LBD and it was pretty rough the last couple years. He was a really big guy(I think he was a sailor at one point), super gentle, but would get up and wander in the middle of the night, agitated, looking in all the closets and cupboards for the “men that my grandmother was hiding from him”. He’d fall down a lot at home, too, and when you’re like 90 but also 200-ish pounds, you break bones real easy. He had suffered numerous mini strokes in his last years, but we didn’t get the LBD diagnosis until after he had passed. Really hard shit.
Casey Kasem had Lewy Body Dementia as well.
This will sound callous as fuck, but I don’t buy his supposed family not also being callous as fuck. Willis’ early onset dementia had been evident for many years now, and they never stopped the DTV ghoul that is Randall Emmett from making money for them. It was clear by 2017, from multiple accounts of crewmembers on DTV stuff like First Kill, that Willis was already severely impaired. By 2018 he couldn’t remember lines and sometimes asked where he was. To film Glass Shyamalan ended up cutting almost of his dialog and used body doubles because Willis couldn’t remember a simple set mark.By that time, people with experience working with Willis were adamant that he’s needs care and not being dragged onto movie sets. Randall Emmett instead dragged Willis out for about 30 DtV films in three years, where and obviously incapacitated Willis would be in the film for a moment, but get top billing and his face on the promotional advertising. Emmett is a full on ghoul, but it couldn’t have kept happening if anyone in Willis’ family just said no, rather than taking the 500K to 1 mil pop per DvT release, instead of, you know, caring for someone.
I just went to his filmography on Wikipedia after reading your comment, and I’m completely bewildered by all these direct-to-video movies listed in the last few years. I have never heard of any of these and there are so many.
Sadly, given the earlier news this isn’t a huge surprise, but it’s still heartbreaking to learn. Poor guy.
Just awful. I feel for him and his family. Fortunately, he has resources and so will have good, professional care that will help alleviate many of the burdens that would otherwise fall on his family.
I hope he forgets Hudson Hawk. I know I wish I could.
My father was diagnosed with it (but he was already in his early 80’s). He was an active, hands-on, fix-it type of guy. With FTD – he could think of projects, and know the desired end result – but he could no longer figure out the “in-between” parts, which made him very frustrated. If my mother mentioned people by name, he had no idea who she was referring to – but if that person was in the room, he knew them but couldn’t name them. This disease steals the ability to associate “objects” with their appropriate “labels”. They just babble, stutter, stumble over attempts to communicate – and then give up and withdraw. We placed him in memory care in March of 2021, and he passed in January 2022 (at age 88).
This is a bummer, for him and his family. I hope he gets all the care he needs to mitigate this as much as possible.