Bruce Willis' Wife Addresses a Common Misconception About His Dementia

Bruce Willis' wife is clearing up a "very common misconception" about the Die Hard star's dementia diagnosis.

After Bruce, 71, was diagnosed with aphasia in 2022 and frontotemporal dementia in 2023, Emma Heming Willis clarified the implications of her husband's diagnoses on The Bosstickspodcast.

"When people say, 'Oh, you know, does he remember who you are?' Well, he does because he doesn't have Alzheimer's; he has FTD," Emma, 47, explained on the podcast's Monday, June 15, episode. "I think that's a very common misconception that, when you think of dementia, we think of memory loss."

Emma continued that frontotemporal dementia, which the Mayo Clinic notes causes deterioration in behavior, personality and language, is "different" than Alzheimer's disease, which leads to memory loss. While Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia, frontotemporal dementia is the most common form of dementia diagnosed in people under the age of 60.

"I think what you experience with any form of dementia is it just takes," Emma, who married The Sixth Sense actor in 2009, continued of becoming his caretaker. "You know, these diseases, they take, and they take, and they take-sometimes very slowly-and you are grieving different losses all the time. So you are consistently in grief."

Emma shares daughters Mabel, 14, and Evelyn, 12, with Bruce, who is also father to daughters Rumer, 37, Scout, 34, and Tallulah, 32, with ex-wife Demi Moore.

When the Pulp Fiction star was first diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, his family decided not to make his health "some dark family secret."

"I think that our family knew that by showing what we were going through with Bruce and this disease, we would see a change in how people look at dementia [and] talk about it," Emma told Spanish newspaper El País in a Sunday, June 14, interview. "…I wanted our two young children not to have to think that they have to talk about their dad's disease in a hushed home like this was some dark family secret."

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This story was originally published June 16, 2026 at 5:51 AM.