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Bruce Willis and wife Emma Heming Willis attend the premiere of "Motherless Brooklyn" in 2019.
ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images
Emma Heming Willis is not sugarcoating the painful realities of caregiving for a loved one with dementia.
The 45-year-old wife of retired movie star Bruce Willis, 68, appeared on the Today show to share an update on her husband’s condition — her first TV interview since the Willis family announced he was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) in February 2023.
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“Dementia is hard,” said Heming Willis, who was joined on the show with the CEO of the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration Susan Dickinson. “It’s hard on the person diagnosed, it’s also hard on the family. And that is no different for Bruce, or myself, or our girls. When they say this is a family disease, it really is.”
Asked by interviewer Hota Kotb if the actor is aware of his condition, Heming Willis simply said, “It’s hard to know.”
FTD is the most common form of dementia in people younger than 60. Symptoms include personality changes, apathy, decision-making difficulties, and speaking or language comprehension challenges.
The model, who married the Die Hard actor in 2009 and calls herself his ‘care partner,’ said that finally learning her husband’s diagnosis, “was the blessing and the curse. To finally understand what was happening, so that I could be into the acceptance of what is. It doesn't make it any less painful, but just being ... in the know of what is happening to Bruce makes it a little easier. ”
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