Bruce Willis’s dementia diagnosis may have been part of his life longer than previously believed. The retired actor’s wife, Emma Heming, recently sat down for Town & Country interview with respected journalist Katie Couric, and she revealed the heartbreaking detail that although Heming didn’t know it at the time, Willis’ dementia first presented itself in the form of a stutter, something he dealt with as a child.
“For Bruce, it started with language,” Heming said after Couric asked how the disease first manifested. “He had a severe stutter as a child. 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.”
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Heming went on to say, “Bruce has always had a stutter, but he has been good at covering it up. 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.”
Willis was previously diagnosed with aphasia, but in 2023 his wife Heming revealed that doctors diagnosed him with frontotemporal dementia, or FTD. The Alzheimer’s Association offers a detailed explanation of FTD, which “refers to a group of disorders caused by progressive nerve cell loss in the brain’s frontal lobes (the areas behind your forehead) or its temporal lobes (the regions behind your ears).”
The association also says nerve cell damage caused by FTD can lead to “loss of function in these brain regions, which variably cause deterioration in behavior, personality and/or difficulty with producing or comprehending language.” There is currently no known cure.
