Bruce Willis’ Family ‘Worries They May Not Have Much More Time’ With Ailing Star
Ensconced in the passenger seat of a nondescript black car, Bruce Willis, wearing a black baseball cap and a striped button-up shirt, stared out of the vehicle’s open window. With one bodyguard behind the wheel and another in the backseat, the former action star appeared wan and distant as he took in his surroundings during a 35-minute drive through Los Angeles’s Studio City neighborhood on September 8. “He seemed relaxed,” an onlooker exclusively tells In Touch. “He didn’t get out of the car.”
It was a rare outing for the beloved Die Hard star. Two and a half years ago, the 69-year-old’s loved ones announced his retirement from acting after doctors confirmed he had aphasia, a brain disorder that robs a person of their ability to communicate. Less than a year later came another devastating diagnosis — frontotemporal dementia. Now, a source tells In Touch, “the disease has progressed to the point where his family worries they may not have much more time with Bruce left.
They wonder whether he’ll even make it to his 70th birthday.” For his current wife and caretaker, Emma Heming, 46, and their girls, Mabel, 12, and Evelyn, 10, plus ex-wife, Demi Moore, 61, and their daughters — Rumer, 36, Scout, 33, and Tallulah, 30 — how much time remains “is always weighing on their minds.”
A DIFFERENT MAN
As they make peace with what’s to come, the family has prioritized making sure Bruce always feels safe. “He rarely goes out, but when he does it’s a carefully orchestrated operation,” explains the source. “He needs help getting ready and getting to the car.” (“Thankfully, dementia has not affected his mobility,” Tallulah revealed last year.) Bruce has caretakers with him “24/7 who supervise him and make sure he’s OK and doesn’t get confused or flustered,” adds the source, noting the actor “has bodyguards to buffer him from the public.”
Though the Sixth Sense star is comfortable, he’s also a different person than his loved ones — and the world — knew. “It’s heartbreaking for the family to see him so vulnerable and dependent,” says the source. “The Bruce they remember used to be full of energy and masculine pride. Now he seems helpless.” Old friend and Moonlighting creator Glenn Gordon Caron last year revealed that the quick-witted Bruce was no longer fully verbal, saying, “All those language skills are no longer available to him.” It was as if, Glenn explained, the Emmy and Golden Globe winner “now sees life through a screen door. ... When you’re with him you know that he’s Bruce and you’re grateful that he’s there, but the joie de vivre is gone.” As In Touch has previously reported, Bruce’s condition has progressed to the point that he no longer recognizes some people, including Demi.
Bruce’s former wife of 11 years has been doing her best to cope. “When you let go of who they’ve been or who you think they [should be], or who even you would like them to be, you can then really stay in the present and take in the joy and the love that is present,” she told Andy Cohen. Her love endures: To mark Bruce’s March birthday, Demi — who forged a strong friendship with him after their 1998 split — shared family photos on Instagram, writing, “We love you and are so grateful for you.”
DEVOTED DAUGHTERS
Though things are different, Bruce’s girls are still finding ways to maintain their bond with him. “Our visits have so much love and I feel that,” Tallulah said in August. “And that overarches anything for me — being able to have that connection. I know he knows how much I love him. I know how much he loves me. I know how much he loves all of us.”
As Bruce declines, his family is realizing that the signs were there earlier than they realized. “Something was wrong for a long time,” Tallulah admitted last year. “It started out with a kind of vague unresponsiveness, which the family chalked up to Hollywood hearing loss: ‘Speak up! Die Hard messed with Dad’s ears,’” she wrote in Vogue. “Later that unresponsiveness broadened, and I sometimes took it personally. He had had two babies with my stepmother … and I thought he’d lost interest in me. Though this couldn’t have been further from the truth.”
Since then, she’s begun grieving memories she’ll never get to make. “I remember a moment when it hit me painfully: I was at a wedding in the summer of 2021 on Martha’s Vineyard, and the bride’s father made a moving speech,” she recalled. “Suddenly I realized that I would never get that moment, my dad speaking about me in adulthood at my wedding. It was devastating.”
It’s taken time, but she’s now able to simply “savor” their time together, she said, “hold my dad’s hand, and feel that it’s wonderful.”
LOVING BONDS
Big sis Rumer, mom to 17-month-old Louetta (dad is musician Derek Richard Thomas), is cherishing her daughter’s bond with her grandpa. “Lou is just starting to walk a little bit, and she was walking over to him, and it was so sweet,” she shared in May. “It almost unlocks that kind of little-kid, girl-dad thing. He’s so sweet with her.”
Tallulah has called her niece the family’s “center of gravity.” But if the toddler is their center, Emma is their rock. Emma ensures that they make every day, every birthday celebration, every holiday count. “The whole family is always showering Bruce with love and affection,” says the source. “Emma’s making his favorite dishes, they watch home movies together, they talk about fun times.” He has “good days and bad days,” adds the source, “but when he laughs at something or has that old sparkle in his eye, they feel so good.”
Meanwhile, Tallulah opened up about her father’s health scare by appearing on the Wednesday, September 18, episode of Good Morning America.
“I have hopes for my father that I’m so reluctant to let go of," she said. "I’ve always recognized elements of his personality in me, and I just know that we’d be such good friends if only there were more time.”
After adding that her father was “stable,” Tallulah reflected on the “hard” experience. “There’s painful days but there’s so much love. And it’s really shown me to not take any moment for granted and I really do think that we’d be best friends. I think he’s very proud of me,” she shared.
