Bruce Willis Hasn’t Forgotten Big Name After Dementia

Tallulah Willis said that her father Bruce Willis still recognizes her despite his frontotemporal dementia diagnosis. In a first-person piece for Vogue, Tallulah said that Bruce — whose family announced he was suffering from aphasia in 2022 before sharing his more specific diagnosis of FTD, a progressive brain disease, in February — has been in declining health for years.

“I’ve known that something was wrong for a long time,” she wrote. “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.’ ”

Noting that it was hard not to take the silence personally, Tallulah continued, “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.”

“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,” she added, referring to mom Demi Moore.