Tallulah Willis told ‘Vogue’ that her father has been in declining health for years
Tallulah Willis says her father Bruce Willis still recognizes her amid his frontotemporal dementia diagnosis.
In a first-person piece for Vogue, Tallulah, 29, said that Bruce, 68 — 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.
Tallulah admitted that she met her father’s health decline with “avoidance and denial” amid her own struggles. But after treatment for her eating disorder — and a borderline personality disorder diagnosis — she said she was able to better face reality.
”Recovery is probably lifelong, but I now have the tools to be present in all facets of my life, and especially in my relationship with my dad,” Tallulah said.
“I can bring him an energy that’s bright and sunny, no matter where I’ve been,” she continued. “In the past I was so afraid of being destroyed by sadness, but finally I feel that I can show up and be relied upon.”
“I can savor that time, hold my dad’s hand, and feel that it’s wonderful,” Tallulah added.
The star, whose mother is Demi Moore, told Vogue that she takes “tons of photos” each time she goes to her dad’s house “of whatever I see, the state of things.”
“I’m like an archaeologist, searching for treasure in stuff that I never used to pay much attention to,” Tallulah continued. “I have every voicemail from him saved on a hard drive. I find that I’m trying to document, to build a record for the day when he isn’t there to remind me of him and of us.”
“These days, my dad can be reliably found on the first floor of the house, somewhere in the big open plan of the kitchen-dining-living room, or in his office. Thankfully, dementia has not affected his mobility,” she added.
Tallulah also said he still remembers her. “He still knows who I am and lights up when I enter the room,” she detailed.
Tallulah also told Vogue that she is “flipping between the present and the past when I talk about Bruce: he is, he was, he is, he was.”
“That’s because I have hopes for my father that I’m so reluctant to let go of,” she said. “I’ve always recognized elements of his personality in me, and I just know that we’d be such good friends if only there were more time.”
“He was cool and charming and slick and stylish and sweet and a little wacky — and I embrace all that. Those are the genes I inherited from him,” Tallulah continued.
She also said that her father would take advantage of the life he’d created, stating, “Having grown up a Jersey boy with a scarcity mentality, he loved to enjoy the life he had made for himself. He was an indulger. Sometimes we’d go to a restaurant and he’d order one of everything on the menu just to have a bite of it all. He always loved a cozy couch with his feet up. Can you be 10 percent more comfortable? I think he asked himself that every day.”
The actor’s family — wife Emma, their children, Mabel, 11, and Evelyn, 9, as well as Moore, 60, and their children, Rumer, 34, Scout, 31, and Tallulah — have come together to help him “live as full a life as possible,” they told PEOPLE in a statement in February.
“The focus for Bruce is to keep him active. He has a busy schedule with activities every day. They make sure both his body and brain is exercised,” a source also said at the time.
