Bruce Willis Battles Dementia: ‘Moonlighting’ Creator Reveals Actor’s Struggle with Verbal Communication

Last March, the family of Bruce Willis disclosed his retirement from acting due to aphasia, but a year later, he received a more specific diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Since then, his family members have kept the public updated on his life, including his 68th birthday celebration earlier this year with his ex-wife, Demi Moore, their three children, Scout, Rumer, and Tallulah, his current wife, Emma Heming Willis, and their two children, Mabel and Evelyn.

Recently, the 1980s ABC series Moonlighting, starring Willis and Cybill Shepherd, became available to stream on Hulu. According to Moonlighting creator Glenn Gordon Caron, Willis was eager for the show to be seen again. Caron shared, “The process [to get Moonlighting onto Hulu] has taken quite a while and Bruce’s disease is a progressive disease. So I was able to communicate with him, before the disease rendered him as incommunicative as he is now, about hoping to get the show back in front of people.” He expressed that it meant a lot to Willis.

Caron has remained in contact with Willis’s wife and three older children since concerns about his well-being were raised on the sets of his recent films before his diagnosis. He stated, “I have tried very hard to stay in his life.” Caron described the impact of frontotemporal dementia, saying, “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.”

According to Caron, frontotemporal dementia has significantly impaired Willis’s ability to communicate, likening it to seeing life through a screen door. However, he believes that Willis can still recognize him. Caron shared, “My sense is the first one to three minutes he knows who I am. 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.” Although the joie de vivre is no longer present, Caron expressed gratitude for Willis’s presence.

During World Frontotemporal Dementia Awareness week, Heming Willis, who has been married to the actor since 2009, provided an update in a Today interview last month. She acknowledged the difficulty of Willis’s condition on the family but emphasized the importance of looking beyond grief and sadness to appreciate the positive moments. Heming Willis stated, “Bruce would really want us to be in the joy of what is. He would really want that for me and our family.”