Rumer Willis shared an upside to watching her father Bruce Willis go through the difficult and devastating battle with dementia.
The 37-year-old actress, who is the eldest out of the film legend’s five daughters, said that she gets to see a different side of him that she had never seen in the past.
‘I’m so grateful I get to go see him,’ she told The Inside Edit on Monday about her relationship with her dad post-diagnoses. ‘Even though it’s different now, I’m so grateful.’
About his personality now and a particular trait he developed, Rumer — who welcomed her daughter Louetta, whom Willis became a grandfather to in April 2023 — shared: ‘There’s a sweetness.’
She explained: ‘He’s always been this kind of macho dude and there’s like a — fragile is not the right word but — just a tenderness that maybe being Bruce Willis might not have allowed him in a certain way.’
Willis, 71, was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) in early 2023, which followed an initial diagnosis of aphasia, a language processing disorder, in 2022.
Rumer Willis said there is an upside to her father Bruce Willis’s heartbreaking dementia battle
During a podcast interview, she opened up about their relationship and the difficult battle with the progressive neurological disease; pictured in April
During the on-camera interview, Rumer admitted that she ‘had no idea’ how ‘prevalent’ the progressive neurological disease is until her father received his diagnosis.
‘It’s wild to me,’ Rumer shared. ‘So many people come up to me now and they say, “My uncle had FTD. My dad had this.”‘
Back in 2022, Willis’s family announced that he was retiring from acting following his aphasia diagnosis.
The actor shares daughters Rumer, Scout, 34, and Tallulah, 32, with his ex-wife Demi Moore.
He is also father to daughters Mabel, 14, and Evelyn, 12, from his current marriage to Emma Heming Willis.
Less than a year later, his FTD diagnosis was revealed via a family statement shared with the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration.
FTD is a form of dementia that causes a rapid decline in the areas of the brain linked to personality and language abilities.
‘While this is painful, it is a relief to finally have a clear diagnosis,’ his family wrote at the time.
They described FTD as a ‘cruel disease’ that ‘can strike anyone.’
She said her father was always a ‘macho guy,’ but now she gets to experience a ‘tenderness’ and ‘sweetness’
‘There’s a sweetness,’ she said about her father now
‘He’s always been this kind of macho dude and there’s like a — fragile is not the right word but — just a tenderness that maybe being Bruce Willis might not have allowed him in a certain way,’ she explained
She added that ‘even though it’s different now,’ she is still ‘so grateful’ for him and to be able to spend time with him
The actor shares daughters Rumer, Scout (not pictured) and Tallulah, 32, with his ex-wife Demi Moore. He is also father to two daughters from his current marriage to Emma Heming Willis (not pictured); pictured in July 2018
During the on-camera interview, Rumer also admitted that she ‘had no idea’ how ‘prevalent’ the progressive neurological disease is until her father received his diagnosis in 2023
‘For people under 60, FTD is the most common form of dementia, and because getting the diagnosis can take years, FTD is likely much more prevalent than we know.’
His family also noted that Willis ‘would want to respond by bringing global attention and a connectedness with those who are also dealing with this debilitating disease and how it impacts so many individuals and their families.’
Earlier this year, Willis’s wife Emma spoke up about his battle with dementia and revealed he has been living in a home with full-time caretakers.
She said the Hollywood star also has anosognosia, a condition where the brain can’t recognize one or more other health conditions.
Speaking in the Conversations with Cam podcast in January, Heming claimed that Willis never connected the dots when it came to understanding his illness, which she said was a ‘blessing.’
‘Bruce never, never tapped in,’ she said. ‘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 described anosognosia as where the brain ‘can’t identify what is happening to it,’ so her husband and others with the disease ‘think this is their normal.’
