Bruce Willis and Demi Moore’s daughter Rumer Willis shared an update on the health of her father who is diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD).
Newsweek reached out to Bruce Willis’ representative via email for comment on Friday.
Why It Matters
Willis, 70, renowned for his roles in films such as Die Hard and Pulp Fiction, has long been a prominent figure in American entertainment. His diagnosis with FTD and subsequent retirement in 2022 has placed a spotlight on an incurable, progressive brain disorder that affects thousands of Americans, the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration states.
What To Know
On Thursday, Rumer Willis took to her Instagram Stories to speak candidly to her 1.2 million followers in an “ask me anything” segment.
When she received a question about her father, she said: “People always ask me this question, and I think it’s kind of a hard one to answer because the truth is that anybody with FTD is not doing great, but he’s doing OK in terms of somebody who’s dealing with frontotemporal dementia, you know what I mean?”
According to the Mayo Clinic, “FTD is an umbrella term for a group of brain diseases that mainly affect the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. These areas of the brain are associated with personality, behavior and language.”
The 37-year-old, who has a two-year-old daughter named Louetta, added that she’s “so happy and grateful that I still get to go and hug him.”
“Whether he recognizes me or not, he can feel the love I’ve given him and I can feel it back from him,” she continued. “I still see a spark of him, and he can feel the love that I’m giving, so that feels really nice. I just feel grateful that I get to go over there with Louetta, and we get to spend time with him, and I get to feel the love that he has for me and that he puts out for me and that I can love him and be with him.”
Willis’ family first shared his FTD diagnosis in 2023 after previously sharing in 2022 that he had been diagnosed with aphasia. The actor’s family moved him into a home with around-the-clock care, a decision his wife, Emma Heming Willis, described as “one of the hardest” she had ever made in an interview with Diane Sawyer in an ABC News special in August, per The Hollywood Reporter.
What People Are Saying
On Thursday, Heming Willis attended the End Well 2025 conference and hit back at critics over her family’s health decisions. According to The Independent, she said: “F*** em! As Bruce would say.”
Moore—who shares daughters Scout, 34, and Tallulah, 31 with Bruce Willis, too—discussed her ex-husband in December 2024 while speaking with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour: “Given the givens, he’s in a very stable place at the moment. And, you know, I’ve shared this before, but I really mean this so sincerely: It’s so important for anybody who’s dealing with this to really meet them where they’re at. And from that place, there is such loving and joy… I mean, obviously, it’s very difficult, and it’s not what I would wish upon anyone, and there is great loss, but there is also great beauty.”
In a separate interview with People in April, Moore revealed what she’s “grateful” for in her relationship with the Hollywood icon: “That regardless of what the outside relationship has been, we have maintained being a family in various forms. The foundation of making our children our priority has never wavered.”
