Additional Coverage:
- Bruce Willis’s wife Emma Heming shares the ‘blessing and the curse’ of actor’s dementia diagnosis (the-independent.com)
Emma Heming Willis Shares Insights into Bruce Willis’s Dementia Journey
Emma Heming Willis, wife of the beloved 70-year-old actor Bruce Willis, has revealed a poignant detail about his battle with frontotemporal dementia (FTD): he is reportedly unaware of his condition. This revelation, shared during a recent appearance on Cameron Oaks Rogers’s Conversations with Cam podcast, was described by Heming Willis as both a “blessing and a curse.”
The Willis family publicly announced Bruce’s FTD diagnosis in 2023, just a year after he stepped away from acting due to aphasia. Since then, Emma Heming Willis has been an open book about her husband’s health, offering candid updates on how the diagnosis has impacted their family, including their two daughters, Mabel Ray, 13, and Evelyn Penn, 11.
“I think that’s like the blessing and the curse of this, is that he never connected the dots that he had this disease, and I’m really happy about that. I’m really happy that he doesn’t know about it,” Heming Willis explained on the podcast.
This lack of awareness is a known neurological symptom called anosognosia, which can manifest in FTD and other forms of dementia. It prevents individuals from accurately recognizing their own illness, a condition Heming Willis emphasized is not denial but rather a consequence of the brain’s changes due to the disease.
“People think this might be denial… actually, this is the anosognosia that comes into play,” she clarified. “It’s not denial.
It’s just that their brain is changing. This is a part of the disease.”
Heming Willis’s podcast appearance follows her strong rebuttal of criticism regarding her decision to move Willis out of their family home due to the degenerative nature of his condition. At the End Well 2025 conference in Los Angeles, an event focused on end-of-life care, she defiantly told the audience, “F*** ’em! As Bruce would say.”
During the conference, Heming Willis joined actor Yvette Nicole Brown, who also cares for her father, to discuss their shared experiences as caregivers. Brown highlighted the unique challenges caregivers face, especially when dealing with dementia, and expressed her support for Heming Willis’s handling of public judgment.
“What people don’t understand who aren’t caregivers, is that every caregiver is different… We all are doing our best and making the best decisions for your family,” Brown stated.
Heming Willis had previously explained that her decision to relocate Bruce was to prevent the need for significant home adjustments that would impact their daughters’ lives, a choice that nonetheless drew unwarranted criticism from online trolls.