The “Die Hard” star was diagnosed with aphasia and frontotemporal dementia in 2022 and 2023.

Bruce Willis’ wife Emma Heming clears up a ‘very common misconception’ about his dementia

The "Die Hard" star was diagnosed with aphasia and frontotemporal dementia in 2022 and 2023.

By Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt

Raechal Shewfelt is a writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2024. Her work has previously appeared on Yahoo and in American *Journalism Review* and *The Shreveport Times*.

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June 15, 2026 8:08 p.m. ET

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Bruce Willis and Emma Heming Willis in 2015. Credit:

Kevin Mazur/Getty

- Bruce Willis' wife Emma Heming Willis clarified that the actor does not suffer from memory loss.

- Emma married Bruce in 2009, and has become an advocate for him and caregivers since the *Pulp Fiction* star was diagnosed with aphasia and frontotemporal dementia.

- She notes that caregivers for people with dementia are "consistently in grief."

Bruce Willis' wife Emma Heming Willis says the *Die Hard *star knows who she is.

"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 said Monday on *The Bossticks* podcast. "I think that's a very common misconception that, when you think of dementia, we think of memory loss.”

Bruce was diagnosed with aphasia in 2022 and with frontotemporal dementia the following year.

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"It's different [from] Alzheimer's," Emma said. "And Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia, but FTD is the most common form of dementia for people under the age of 60."

Bruce, 71, known for movies such as *Pulp Fiction*,* The Sixth Sense*, and the *Die Hard *franchise, stopped acting after he was diagnosed. Since then, Emma, whom he married in 2009, has become an advocate for her husband and for caregivers.

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"I think what you experience with any form of dementia is it just takes," she said. "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 noted that she's more "used to it" now and able to navigate it better than before, but added that "you are just sitting with it and moving alongside of it."

Emma, 47, has two daughters with Bruce, 14-year-old Mabel and 12-year-old Evelyn. He is also the father of three adult daughters with ex-wife Demi Moore: Rumer, 37; Scout, 34; and Tallulah, 32.

Rumer Willis, Demi Moore, Bruce Willis, Scout Willis, Emma Heming Willis, and Tallulah Willis in 2019.

Stefanie Keenan/Getty

In January, Emma explained that the actor isn't aware of his condition.

"I think they think this is their normal. That's not for everybody," she said on the *Conversations With Cam Podcast*. "There's this term — this neurological condition that comes with FTD and other types of dementia — called anosognosia, where your brain can't identify what's happening to it. People think this might be denial, they don't want to go to the doctor because they're like, 'I'm fine' — this is where the anosognosia comes into play. It's not denial, it's just that their brain is changing. This is a part of the disease."

Because of that, Emma said, Bruce "never connected the dots that he had this disease, and I'm really happy about that. I'm happy he doesn't know about it."

She launched the Emma & Bruce Willis Fund to raise awareness, fund promising research and accelerate discovery, and to support caregivers in March.

Watch the full conversation above.

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