Bruce Willis’ daughter, Tallulah Willis, has given an update on his dementia diagnosis in a moving essay.
The 68-year-old veteran actor suffers from frontotemporal dementia, a rare type of horrific disease, that causes particular problems with behavior and language. It results from damage to neurons in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. As a result, the actor stepped away from his Hollywood acting career in March, and his wife Emma Heming Willis, who he wed in 2009, has been his “care partner” ever since.
And now Tallulah, Bruce’s 29-year-old daughter, who he shares with ex Demi Moore, has spoken further about his medical condition while also speaking about her struggles with anorexia and diagnosis with Border Personality Disorder. Speaking about the vitriolic online trolling she had been subjected to concerning her appearance since she was a child, Tallulah admitted that she first battled with talking about these matters given that she was a “no baby”. However, she soon realized that only she could “protect me” because “no one is coming, not even my big, strong dad, an action hero onscreen and in my childish imagination”.
In her new essay for Vogue, Tallulah explained that upon her dad’s aphasia diagnosis in early 2022, she learned that the progressive neurological disorder “chips away at his cognition and behavior day by day”. Heartbreakingly, she added that she had known something was wrong with Bruce to health-wise for a “long time”, but they had previously put his “vague unresponsiveness” down to Hollywood hearing loss, telling each other “, Speak up! Die Hard messed with Dad’s ears.”
“Later, that unresponsiveness broadened, and I sometimes took it personally. He had had two babies with my stepmother, Emma Heming Willis, and I thought he’d lost interest in me,” she wrote: “Though this couldn’t have been further from the truth, my adolescent brain tortured itself with some faulty math: I’m not beautiful enough for my mother, I’m not interesting enough for my father.”
Tallulah noted that she was “not proud” of handling her dad’s decline with “avoidance and denial” but noted it was down to her struggle with anorexia, for which she was treated at a Malibu rehab. She was later diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder at Driftwood Recovery in Austin, Texas. However, along her health journey, she had moments where she realized the severity of her dad’s condition. On one occasion in 2021, she said she was at a wedding where the bride’s father made a moving speech, forcing her to recognize that her dad would not be able to do the same at her wedding.
She concluded by expressing her joy that her dad “still knows who I am and lights up when I enter the room”, and now her primary purpose is to make him more comfortable.
In other news – America’s Got Talent season 18 winner revealed
After the show’s eighteenth season, the competition series crowned a new winner—and this duo earned themselves a treat after beating out their stiff competition.
During the Sept. 27 finale, the top five acts of the season were announced as an acrobatic and head-balancing duo the Ramadhani Brothers, singer Putri Ariani, trainer Adrian Stoica and his dog Hurricane, magician Anna DeGuzman and dance troupe Murmuration. And though each performer delivered a top-notch performance to end the season, Adrian and Hurricane’s storytelling, and comedic act ultimately took home the $1 million grand prize, as well as the option to headline the America’s Got Talent Presents Superstars Live show at the Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Read More
