Emma Heming Willis has opened up about her life with Bruce Willis as he battles frontotemporal dementia (FTD), a condition he was diagnosed with in 2023.
In a heartfelt interview with Diane Sawyer for the ABC special Emma and Bruce Willis: The Unexpected Journey, Emma revealed how glimpses of her husband still emerge in an emotional update.
“We get moments,” she said. “It’s his laugh, right? Like, he has such a hearty laugh and, you know, sometimes you’ll see that twinkle in his eye or that smirk and I just get like transported.”
Emma paused and then confessed through tears, “And it’s just hard to see because as quickly as those moments appear, (snaps fingers) it goes. That’s hard.”
The special, shown Tuesday on Good Morning America, discloses that approximately 50,000 people in the U.S. suffer from FTD, a disorder that is frequently challenging to identify.
For Bruce, 70, the transformation from his loving, sociable personality to someone emotionally withdrawn was shocking and bewildering for Emma, his former wife, Demi Moore, and his children.
“He felt a little removed, very cold, not like Bruce,” Emma remembered. “Who is very warm and affectionate. To go the complete opposite of that was alarming and scary.”
Bruce’s dedicated wife, now his full-time caregiver, admitted that the journey to his diagnosis was anything but smooth.
“I was so panicked,” Emma confessed when she first heard the term “frontotemporal dementia”. “I remember hearing it and just not hearing anything else. It was like I was free-falling.”
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Emma also discussed how Bruce’s tragic diagnosis impacted their marriage. She began by recalling how she started to realize things were changing when he stopped taking his kids to school after it was something he “loved” to do for so long.
“For someone who is very talkative and very engaged he was a little more quiet,” she explained. “And when the family would get together, he’d just melt a little bit.”
Emma initially thought it might be his hearing, which he partially lost after an incident on the set of the first Die Hard film. His stutter, which “haunted” him in childhood, also returned, and he started becoming “indifferent” and “pulling away” from her.
“He felt a little removed, a little cold, not like Bruce, who is very warm and affectionate. To go the complete opposite of that was alarming and scary,” she confessed. “I didn’t understand what was happening and I thought just, like, ‘How can I remain in a marriage that doesn’t feel like what we had?’”
She said the pair did have “conversations” about their issues, but Willis would “dismiss” them. “It got very bumpy and confusing,” she confessed.
The Hollywood actor’s joy “fluctuated,” Emma said, sharing that at times things were “good,” until all of a sudden they “weren’t.”
Bruce was officially diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) in February 2023. This followed an earlier announcement in March 2022, when his family disclosed he was stepping away from acting due to aphasia, a condition that affects language and communication.
Upon further assessment, the diagnosis was revised to FTD, a more specific and progressive neurodegenerative disorder.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.the-express.com ’
