Bruce Willis’ wife has to tell paparazzi to “give him space” after dementia diagnosis
Emma Hemming Willis is asking for space after Bruce Willis was photographed during a rare public excursion over the weekend
Aux News Bruce Willis
Following Bruce Willis’ dementia diagnosis last month, his wife is publicly asking the paparazzi to give him space. Emma Heming Willis, who’s been married to the actor since 2009, took to Instagram over the weekend to ask photographers for a little bit of common decency.
“If you are someone who is looking after someone with dementia, you know how difficult and stressful it can be to get someone out into the world and to navigate them safely, even just to get a cup of coffee,” she explains. “It’s clear that there’s still a lot of education that needs to be put forth. So this one is going out to the photographers and video people that are trying to get those exclusives of my husband out and about. Just keep your space.”
“I know this is your job, but maybe just keep your space,” she continues. “Please don’t be yelling at my husband, asking how he’s doing, whatever. The woo-hooing and the yippee-ki-yay’s—just don’t do it. Give him the space. Allow for our family or whoever’s with him that day to be able to get him from Point A to Point B safely. That’s my PSA.”
It seems ridiculous that she needs to tell people to leave a man suffering from dementia alone as he tries to maneuver the world with his loved ones, but here we are. Over the weekend, Page Six published photos of 67-year-old Willis while he was on a “walk with pals.” Other videos emerged over the weekend featuring Willis out to get coffee with friends in Santa Monica.
After being diagnosed with aphasia last year, Willis recently received a more specific diagnosis: Frontotemporal dementia, or FTD. In addition to struggling with speech, language, and movement, those with FTD also have changes in behavior. Per The Washington Post, part of daily caretaking for FTD patients includes help with physical safety.
50 Comments
It’d also be helpful to address those that fund the paparazzi via purchase of their problematic pictures.
Heming* with 1 m, which you got right in the body of the article
Of course she does. What do you expect people to just do the right thing?
His wife is a Millennial. I wonder what she feels like being married to a 67 year old man with dementia.
His wife is Gen X. She’s 44, meaning she was born three years before the Millennial generation starts.
Nitpicky, but the oldest Millennails are now 43 (1980). She’s 44, she is basically a Millennial.
Millennial generation starts in 1982, not 1980.Also, she’s actually turning 45 this year, she was born in 1978.
I’ve never heard anyone define the cutoff as anything other than 1980, but these generation definitions aren’t some kind of hard science anyways.
I’ve also only ever heard 1980
I have literally never heard anyone define the cutoff as 1980. I’m a millennial btw, I know which years my generation spans. The term millennial refers to people born before 2000, who will come of age at or near the year 2000. 1980 wouldn’t even make sense because someone born in 1980 would be 20 years old in 2000. They’re already of age. Of course, that doesn’t stop someone born in 1980 from identifying as a millennial, but someone born in 1978 is absolutely a Gen X.
Yeah, the actual year varies from source to source. Usually I see it defined by presidential terms, so Millennials were born when Reagan, Bush and Clinton where in office. Either way she’s close enough to the line that she would be what is known as a cusper.
You all know these generation markers are arbitrary right. For the record I’ve always heard 1980 is the cut off but it doesn’t really matter if she is a “elder millennial” or a “baby Gen X”
To some extent, sure, but not completely as life experiences and when you come of age play a role. Anyways, the only reason why I bothered pointing this out in the first place is because Peters snark made it sound like she was significantly younger than Bruce instead of a middle age women and years of hearing people complain about millennials have made me somewhat defensive.
This is some pretty wild fanfiction spun out of the rhetorical question I asked. I wasn’t thinking anything about gold diggers or attacking Millennials. I was thinking about if people who marry way outside their age think about these things at the time.They got married in 2009, when she was 30 and he was 54. I wonder if she contemplated what it would be like to be doing the nursing home gig by barely more than a decade later.
You could have just used her age in the first place. But I guess calling her a “Millennial” makes it sound like she’s forty-plus years younger than him instead of twenty-three, and that’s more fun to sneer at.
Nitpicky, but you said yourself that she’s not a millennial. Try again!
No Gen X is from 65-80. Also you’re an asshole
Regardless of what she is, what a shitty take.
Regardless of what she is, what a shitty take.
No, what’s shitty is being a 55 year old man who enthralls someone so far below your age that you’ll end up putting them on nursing home duty by the time they are barely into the enriching part of adulthood.You know, like exactly this.
I think this is a controversial topic but if I understand you correctly, I don’t necessarily disagree: you’re basically saying that the choice to marry someone far below your age is making a choice (high likelihood) to chain them to end-of-life hardships far before their time.
That’s EXACTLY what I’m saying yes
Probably love, you cynically wrong bitch.
If I’d hazard a guess, pretty shitty. Dementia is a hard thing to see a loved one go through. Not sure why her or his age matters in that equitations. People are married to others with chronic disease all the time regardless of age. It’s never fun.
Probably considerably better than being married to you.
If she were married to me we could go rock climbing next weekend to blow off steam after a grueling 7 hour Q&A. And also keep doing that same thing for 3 more decades before it’s diaper changing time.
Unless you fall and are now in a wheelchair or something to that effect. Young people are diagnosed with debilitating diseases often. I imagine if a younger man married Jane Fonda 30 or so years ago she may be in better health than he would be today.
not gonna go through reading all that nonsense but with a quick scan of a couple comments I can conclude you’re not only a douche but also a moron.
Unless, of course, you suffer a catastrophic brain injury or tomorrow. No one is guaranteed good health or a long life.And shame on you.
A freak injury isn’t the same thing as the natural degradation of the human brain. When two 30 year olds get married, there’s probably only a 1% chance that they will have significantly different health outcomes at each stage of life.When a 55 year old marries a 30 year old, there’s a 90% chance that they will have significantly different health outcomes at a given stage.This bright young woman shouldn’t be dealing with end-of-life hardships for 3 more decades. Yet she is doing it now because a 54 year old selfishly predated her when she was 29.
1) 1%? 90%? Where are these numbers coming from? As to this situation, a quick google tells me FTD (what Willis has been diagnosed with) has a prevalence of 0.01% to 4%. I can’t fault Willis for not predicting he would get it, or Heming for not considering it. Or perhaps they did! Often when people get married they take a “for sickness and in health” vow, willing to risk all sorts of things for the chance to spend a lifetime (however long that turns out to be) together.
2) “Yet she is doing it now because a 54 year old selfishly predated her when she was 29.” Interesting use of language. Are you arguing that 29-year-old women are not able to freely choose an older partner, or is there something specific you know about Willis’s and Heming’s relationship that indicates he was taking advantage of her?3) I am not thrilled by your language, both in your original comment and in the bit about the diaper, and I wonder if you have much experience with people with disabilities. Your comments, whether you intended them to or not, come off as ableist, as if a life with a cognitive or physical disability is a life less deserving of love and care. We can be cognizant and supportive of the struggles a caregiver goes through without declaring the relationship should never have happened in the first place.
I guess you don’t know about early onset dementia (someone in my life died from it at 46) or MS or schizophrenia or any of the other massive amount of disabilities that can hit you around middle age or younger.
She was a grown adult when she married him. She knew what she was getting into. Stop trying to take away her agency and stop acting like it’s some HORRIFYING thing that a grown-ass woman who was almost 30 years old got married to another consenting adult. You absolute asshole.
i wonder what your spouse feels like being married to bleached dogshit
I know this is your jobMaybe “yelling at people with dementia” shouldn’t be a job.
I mean, I still do part time photography, but I would never get up in anyone’s grill to get a photo (it’s why I generally stick with events where it’s a known commodity). If you want to get a paparazzi shot, go with a telephoto lens (in the 200mm+ range) to get your photo so that you don’t interfere in their lives, especially when it’s a man that is well known to be suffering from dementia.
You gotta wonder just how stupid these people are. He’s literally diagnosed with a disease that makes him unable to speak, why the fuck are you yelling “How are you feeling Bruce” at him
They sold their pictures to Page Six. They’re not stupid, they’re just scum.
To get any sort of reaction, positive or negative. They’re money-motivated scumbags.
He can’t speak but he can gesture. Also, fuck those people.
Gesture…you know, the finger?
Depending on how far his disease has progressed, he may not even know his name any more. And screaming at him will just scare him, which is just really shitty.
They aren’t stupid. They are cruel. Cruelty is their reason to get up in the morning.
As the person who was in charge of taking care of my mom when she had dementia, you *really* don’t want to involve yourself in this if you’re not already involved.
Yeah, my grandma had Alzheimer’s, and it was bad enough finally in like 2014 where she had to start living in assisted living (she was 85 that year) and eventually had to move to nursing home in 2019 when it got to be too bad even for that (and she had nearly died from gall bladder infection/pneumonia combo) before passing in 2021 at nearly 92 during Covid. It was harder than hell for even the nursing home to take care of her there at the end.
Like the thing about “being in public with someone with dementia” is that these are people (due to faults in their brains) who are absolutely convinced of their own reality. Like if I would take my mom to Target to pick out the color lipstick she wanted, she’d convince herself that her parents dropped her off and that I was just some stranger. Someone else intervening in this situation is just going to make it 10x harder to get her home. The last thing you want to do with a dementia patent is “get them upset.”
My sincere sympathies.
This will fall on deaf ears.
Huh?
I’m not a big Bruce Willis fan, but leave the poor guy alone. These people bothering him are vultures.
I’d love to read the comments on this article, but the piss poor functionality of this site is preventing that. Something, probably an ad, is making everything appear as blank white space. I tried reloading, and a different article loaded instead. The functionality of a lot of sites has gone down quite a bit in the last few years, thanks mostly to advertising, but the AV Club is one of the worst in that respect. It used to be a great site. It’s a shame.