Emma Heming Willis is opening up about her husband, beloved actor Bruce Willis’ dementia, telling ABC News’ Diane Sawyer in an interview set to air on Tuesday night that the former Hollywood superstar’s brain is failing him, despite being a healthy man otherwise.
The 70-year-old Die Hard actor’s decades in television and Hollywood movies came to an abrupt end when, in 2023, his diagnosis with frontotemporal dementia was announced by his family. FTD is an umbrella term for a group of brain diseases that primarily affect the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, according to the Mayo Clinic. Symptoms include changes in personality, indifference, socially inappropriate behavior, and, in Willis’ case, the loss of language.
“Bruce is still very mobile. Bruce is in really great health overall,” Heming Willis, who has written a book about her caregiving journey, told Sawyer in a clip from the upcoming ABC special that aired on Good Morning America. “It’s just his brain that is failing him…The language is going and we’ve learned to adapt. And we have a way of communicating with him, which is just a different way.”
Her book, The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope, and Yourself on the Caregiving Path, looks not only at her but the experience of their family — the couple has 11-year-old and 13-year-old daughters — as his dementia set in. It’s just a few years into his diagnosis, and the 49-year-old model and entrepreneur has made a segue in her career to become an advocate for caregivers, pushing for support for the spouses, family members and loved ones of people living with conditions like dementia that result in progressive decline in physical or mental ability.
Heming Willis was a successful model who appeared in top 100 lists of the world’s most beautiful women and walked runways for John Galliano, Christian Dior, Chanel and others. She met Bruce Willis and the couple married in 2009 in Turks and Caicos. Since then, she has founded the skin care brand Coco Baba, a wellness and supplements brand, and launched fragrances with her husband.
Opening up one-on-one with Sawyer, she says that she and her daughters still see glimmers of Willis’ personality.
“Not days, but we get moments,” she told Sawyer in the GMA clip. “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, you know, I just get transported. And it’s just hard to see, because as quickly as those moments appear, then it goes. It’s hard, but I’m grateful. I’m grateful that my husband is still very much here.”
Emma & Bruce Willis: The Unexpected Journey airs Aug. 26, at 8 p.m. ET on ABC. The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope, and Yourself on the Caregiving Path will be released on Sept. 7.
