Bruce Willis ‘Not Totally Verbal’ But ‘Still Bruce,’ Friend Says

Published: October 13, 2023

Bruce Willis ‘Not Totally Verbal’ But ‘Still Bruce,’ Friend Says

By Movieguide® Contributor

Bruce Willis is now largely “incommunicative” as his frontotemporal dementia progresses, according to a friend.

“My sense is the first one to three minutes he knows who I am,” MOONLIGHTING creator Glenn Gordon Caron said of the actor. “He’s not totally verbal; he used to be a voracious reader—he didn’t want anyone to know that—and he’s not reading now. All those language skills are no longer available to him, and yet he’s still Bruce.”

Caron shared that he has “tried very hard to stay in [Willis’] life” and visits the actor on a monthly basis.

“He’s an extraordinary person,” he continued. “The thing that makes [his disease] so mind-blowing is [that] if you’ve ever spent time with Bruce Willis, there is no one who had any more joie de vivre than he. He loved life and…just adored waking up every morning and trying to live life to its fullest. So the idea that he now sees life through a screen door, if you will, makes very little sense. He’s really an amazing guy.”

Caron and Willis’ collaboration on MOONLIGHTING will soon make its streaming debut on Hulu, something the actor’s wife, Emma Heming Willis, celebrated on Instagram.

“What happy news this is,” she wrote under a photo of Willis and his co-star, Cybill Shepherd. “You bet our family will be watching tomorrow.”

Heming Willis has been open about her struggles as a caregiver for her husband.

“Dementia is hard,” she said during an appearance on the TODAY show. “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.”

Movieguide® previously reported:

Heming has been very open about what life is like as a caretaker for someone with dementia.

“I’m not good,” she said in an Instagram video. “But I have to put my best foot forward for the sake of myself and my family because again, when we are not looking after ourselves, we cannot look after anyone that we love. This is a conscious effort. It does not come to me easily, but I am just doing the best that I can, always.”