Bruce Willis’ wife reveals the ‘severe’ symptom that signalled his dementia

Bruce Willis’ wife has revealed the return of a childhood stutter was the first symptom of his dementia.

The Die Hard actor, 69, was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) last year which came after he retired from acting in 2022 due to aphasia.

Since then, his wife Emma Heming Willis and his ex-wife Demi Moore have provided the public with health updates on the actor.

Now Emma, 46, has shared how the family didn’t initially realise there was anything wrong when ‘his language started changing’.

‘For Bruce, it started with language. He had a severe stutter as a child. He went to college, and there was a theatre teacher who said, “I’ve got something that’s going to help you”,’ she explained.

‘From that class, Bruce realised that he could memorise a script and be able to say it without stuttering. That’s what propelled him into acting.’

Although Bruce ‘always had a stutter he was good at covering it up’.

But even when his speech started to change, Emma wasn’t aware it was an early sign of a serious health condition.

‘As his language started changing, it (seemed like it) was just a part of a stutter, it was just Bruce. Never in a million years would I think it would be a form of dementia for someone so young,’ she added when speaking to Town & Country.

It was still another few years before Bruce was diagnosed with FTD, with his wife saying the disease was often ‘misdiagnosed, misunderstood or missed’ altogether.

Emma went on to say it was difficult to determine ‘where Bruce ended and where his disease started to take over’.

The model shares daughters Mabel, 12, and 10-year-old Evelyn with the actor.

She said the girls started to notice Bruce’s cognitive decline before his official diagnosis, and that she’s ‘never tried to sugarcoat anything for them’.

Although Emma said their ‘plans to do and experience beautiful things with their girls’ she now had to reckon with the fact they would likely never happen.

However, she was ‘learning to take some control back’ and see the ‘cracks of light’ despite not facing ‘the most beautiful story I could have thought of’.

Bruce also has three adult daughters from his first marriage to Demi Moore — Rumer, 36, Scout, 33, and Tallulah, 30.

Last year Tallulah wrote about noticing the early signs of her father’s dementia in an essay for Vogue.

‘It started out with a kind of vague unresponsiveness, which the family chalked up to Hollywood hearing loss,’ she wrote.

‘Later that unresponsiveness broadened, and I sometimes took it personally.’

She went on to write she had felt her father had ‘lost interest’ in her as they struggled to communicate.

There are no treatments or cure for FTD.