Bruce Willis’ Wife Says He’s in “Great Health” but His “Brain is Failing”

Bruce Willis’ wife has shared a health update on the actor two years after he was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia.

Emma Heming Willis made the revelation during an interview for the TV special Emma & Bruce Willis: The Unexpected Journey, which debuts on ABC tonight at 8:00 p.m. ET and will begin streaming tomorrow on Hulu and Disney+.

During the interview, Heming Willis revealed that while the actor’s body is strong, the disease has affected his ability to communicate.

“Bruce is still very mobile. Bruce is in really great health overall,” she explained to Sawyer. “It’s just his brain that is failing him … The language is going, and you know, we’ve learned to adapt. And we have a way of communicating with him, which is just a different, a different way.”

Heming Willis went on to say that before the actor was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease aphasia in 2022 (a language disorder that affects the ability to communicate), she noticed that in social situations, “he was just a little more quiet,” as opposed to his usual demeanor of being “talkative and very engaged.” The diagnosis led to the actor officially retiring from acting.

Less than a year after the aphasia diagnosis, it was discovered that Willis also had frontotemporal dementia, which, among other symptoms, “brings an inevitable decline in functioning.”

Still, Heming Willis said that there are still flashes of the actor’s famously engaging personality: “I mean, we still get those days. Not days but moments… sometimes you’ll see that twinkle in his eye or that spark, and, you know, I just get, like, transported. And it’s just hard because, as quickly as those moments appear, then it goes.” See the interview clip (via Good Morning America) below.