Tallulah Willis Reveals the Heartbreaking Moment the Weight of Her Dad Bruce's Declining Health Hit Her

Tallulah Willis is opening up about her own journey processing her dad Bruce Willis' health problems. After the Die Hard actor, 68, was revealed to have been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia in February, his 29-year-old daughter with ex-wife Demi Moore spoke candidly about her the moment it "painfully" hit her that her father's health was declining in an essay for Vogue. 

In the summer of 2021, Tallulah recalled having an emotional reaction when she was attending a wedding on Martha's Vineyard and the bride's father gave a moving speech. "Suddenly I realized that I would never get that moment, my dad speaking about me in adulthood at my wedding. It was devastating," she wrote. "I left the dinner table, stepped outside, and wept in the bushes."

Tallulah had suspected something was going on with her dad "for a long time," she continued. "It started out with a kind of vague unresponsiveness, which the family chalked up to Hollywood hearing loss: 'Speak up! Die Hard messed with Dad's ears.' Later that unresponsiveness broadened, and I sometimes took it personally. He had had two babies with my stepmother, Emma Heming Willis, and I thought he'd lost interest in me."

Bruce also is father to Scout, 31, and Rumer, 34, whom he shares with ex-wife Moore, as well as Mabel, 11, and Evelyn, 9, with his wife Emma. "Though this couldn't have been further from the truth, my adolescent brain tortured itself with some faulty math: I'm not beautiful enough for my mother, I'm not interesting enough for my father," Tallulah continued, noting that this tapped into her own struggles with body dysmorphia and borderline personality disorder.

Through it all, she wrote, "My dad was quietly struggling." Now in recovery herself, Tallulah wrote that she's able to be present in her life and "especially" in her relationship with her dad." She continued, "I can savor that time, hold my dad's hand, and feel that it's wonderful. I know that trials are looming, that this is the beginning of grief, but that whole thing about loving yourself before you can love somebody else – it's real."

Now, when she visits her father, Tallulah makes sure to take a lot of photos, and she saves every voicemail from him on a hard drive. "I find that I'm trying to document, to build a record for the day when he isn't there to remind me of him and of us," she wrote. Meanwhile, her father's mobility has not been affected – she still remembers who she is "and lights up when I enter the room."