Unfortunately, the communication difficulties are just a symptom of the illness Bruce was facing, the family added, saying they were relieved to finally have a clear diagnosis.
Frontotemporal degeneration (FTD) is a neurodegenerative disease related to Alzheimer’s disease. People with FTD may have memory problems, behavior changes, or difficulty speaking or moving.
Today there is no treatment for this disease, a reality that we hope will change in the years to come, underlined his relatives in a press release shared by his wife Emma Heming Willis, as well as his ex-wife, actress Demi Moore, and their children Rumer, Scout, Tallulah, Mabel and Evelyn.
“We hope that as Bruce’s condition evolves, the media will work to draw attention to this disease, which requires much more awareness and research,” they added.
According to some American specialists, frontotemporal dementia is most common in people aged 40 to 65 and accounts for a fifth of dementia cases.
Iconic heroes of the big screen
The Bruce Willis star had already faded before his retirement, but he remains one of Hollywood’s best-known action film actors. His career has forged him the image of an infallible hero, the opposite of his current illness.
He first distinguished himself in the 1980s with a recurring role on the series Clair de lune (Moonlight) opposite Cybill Shepherd, but it was the 1988 action film Die Hard (Crystal Trap) that made him famous as the invincible police Lieutenant John Zum international star made McClane.
Bruce Willis as John McClane in the first film in the Die Hard saga.
Photo: IMDb/20th Century Fox
The shaved head and grin had become the actor’s trademark, who reprized the role for two sequels — 58 Minutes to Live (Die Hard 2: Die Harder) and Walk or Die (Die Hard with a Vengeance) — in the 1990s and his role gained confirmed notoriety and became one of the references of the genre.
Highly sought after in Hollywood, he makes a number of major productions, whether classic action films – The Last Boy Scout, The Jackal (The Jackal) – or crossbred science fiction like 12 Monkeys (12 Monkeys), which had seduced the critics, or The Fifth Element (The Fifth Element), by Luc Besson.
He will also tour with directors as famous as Brian De Palma, Robert Zemeckis, but above all Quentin Tarantino, who offered him the role of a boxer pursued by gangsters in Pulp Fiction in 1994, when he was at the height of his fame.
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, Bruce Willis will also give notable performances for their darker and more dramatic tone with his fantastic thrillers The Sixth Sense and Incassable.
He continues to tour extensively, but hasn’t enjoyed the same success and his profile is gradually eroding, despite forays into other genres such as comedy in 2000’s The Whole Nine Yards.
He signs two new parts of the Die Hard saga, 2007 and 2013, which neither convince critics nor audiences.
For the past ten years, Bruce Willis has not hesitated to make fun of himself and the clichés that stuck to his skin, as in the comedy Cop Out or the first two installments of the Sylvester Stallone-piloted action series Expendables.