Bruce Willis’s early dementia signs were initially mistaken as the return of his childhood stutter.
In an interview with Town & Country, the Die Hard actor’s wife Emma Heming Willis revealed that her husband’s initial signs of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) were dismissed due to his lifelong struggle with a stutter.
“Bruce has always had a stutter, but he has been good at covering it up,” she said, noting that his stutter had motivated him to pursue acting. “He went to college and there was a theater teacher who said, ‘I’ve got something that’s going to help you.’ From that class, Bruce realized that he could memorize a script and be able to say it without stuttering. That’s what propelled him into acting.”
However, they soon realized his struggles went far beyond a stutter, as Willis was later diagnosed with a symptom of FTD known as aphasia – a condition that affects speech and language abilities.
According to the Mayo Clinic, doctors use FTD as an umbrella term for a group of disorders that primarily impact the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. These regions of the brain are responsible for managing personality, behavior, and language.
“For Bruce, it started in his temporal lobes and then has spread to the frontal part of his brain. It attacks and destroys a person’s ability to walk, think, make decisions,” Heming Willis explained.
“As his language started changing, it [seemed like it] was just a part of a stutter, it was just Bruce,” the 46-year-old added. “Never in a million years would I think it would be a form of dementia for someone so young.”
“I say that FTD whispers, it doesn’t shout,” she continued. “It’s hard for me to say, ‘This is where Bruce ended, and this is where his disease started to take over.’ He was diagnosed two years ago, but a year prior, we had a loose diagnosis of aphasia, which is a symptom of a disease but is not the disease.”
In February 2023, Willis’s family revealed the Hollywood action star had been officially diagnosed with FTD, calling the condition “a cruel disease.” In the joint statement shared with the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration, they said that since the condition is the most common form of dementia, it can take years for most to get a diagnosis.
“Today there are no treatments for the disease, a reality that we hope can change in the years ahead. As Bruce’s condition advances, we hope that any media attention can be focused on shining a light on this disease that needs far more awareness and research,” read the statement signed by Heming Willis, as well as the actor’s ex-wife Demi Moore and their children.
“Bruce always believed in using his voice in the world to help others, and to raise awareness about important issues both publicly and privately.”