Tallulah Willis, 29, daughter of Bruce Willis, in an interview with Vogue:
Discovery of movie star diagnosis. My family announced in early 2022 that Bruce suffered from aphasia, an inability to speak or understand language. And we learned earlier this year that this symptom is a hallmark of frontotemporal dementia, a progressive neurological disorder that affects your everyday cognition and behavior. But I knew for a long time that something was wrong.
The actor’s daughter cites Bruce’s classic films as a contributing factor to hearing loss. “It all started with a kind of vague indifference that the family traced back to the Hollywood hearing loss: ‘Speak up!’ ‘Die Hard’ messed up Dad’s hearing.”
She believed for a time that her father’s condition was actually due to a lack of interest in her. “Later on, this lack of response intensified and I took it personally at times. He had two children with my stepmother, Emma Heming Willis, and I thought he had lost interest in me. But that couldn’t be anymore. Far from the truth, my teenage brain racked with a miscalculation: “I’m not pretty enough for my mom, I’m not interesting enough for my dad.”
Tallulah was struggling with body dysmorphia and anorexia when her father began his struggle. “I admit that I have met Bruce’s downfall in recent years with a level of avoidance and denial that I am not proud of. The truth is, I was too ill to deal with it myself,” she said.
Bruce’s daughter also suffered from depression. “For four years I’ve suffered from anorexia nervosa, which I’m reluctant to talk about because after becoming sober in my twenties, restricting my eating seemed like the last addiction I could handle. When I was 25, I was admitted to a health center. Inpatient treatment in Malibu [Califórnia, nos Estados Unidos] to treat the depression I lived with growing up,” he said.
She then went on to say, “I was also diagnosed with ADHD and started taking stimulants, which made a difference.” In June last year, she also said that she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder shortly after her fiancé at the time had left her and she was admitted to a clinic.
Current relationship with father: “Every time I go to my father’s house, I take lots of photos of everything I see, of the state of things. I’m like an archaeologist looking for treasure in things I’ve never paid much attention to. I have everything.” His voicemails. Stored on a hard drive. I guess I try to document it, make a record for the day when he’s not there to remember him and us.”
Next, she says that the dementia hasn’t affected her father’s mobility. “Nowadays my father can be found on the first floor of the house, somewhere in the large open plan kitchen or in his study. Luckily the dementia has not affected his mobility.”
Tallulah scolds about recognizing her father in his current state of health. “He still knows who I am and lights up when I walk into the room. (He can always know who I am, more or less on the occasional bad day. One difference between frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer’s dementia is that, at least early in life , the disease, the former is characterized by motor and language deficits, while the latter characterized by greater memory loss), she explained. “When I talk about Bruce, I constantly vacillate between present and past: he is, he was, he is, he was. It’s because I have hopes for my dad that I’m reluctant to give up,” he said.