With a couple of years now gone since the actor retired due to health concerns, Bruce Willis has gotten an encouraging health update from his daughter and fellow actor, Rumer Willis. The beloved action genre star’s family announced in early 2022 that he would be stepping away from his acting career after being diagnosed with aphasia, a neurological condition that directly affects the area of the brain in charge of language and comprehension. Following the retirement news, an outpouring of love came from fans and previous Willis collaborators, including John Travolta, M. Night Shyamalan and Kevin Smith, among others.
During a recent interview on the Today show, Rumer Willis was asked about her father’s health and status some two years after his retirement announcement came out. The actor offered an encouraging update for Bruce Willis’ current health, assuring that he’s “so good” and even sharing heartwarming stories of how he’s been interacting with her daughter and praising both fans’ support and the family’s effort to raise awareness of his condition. See what Willis shared in the quote and video below:
He’s so good. I actually got to see him right before I came out [to New York]. And [daughter] Lou is just starting to walk a little bit, and she was walking over to him, and it was so sweet. It’s so nice because I feel like my dad is just like — he’s a girl dad, through and through. It almost unlocks that kind of little-kid, girl-dad thing. He’s so sweet with her. Our vulnerability and transparency as a family about what he’s going through to me is so important because if it can have any impact on another family that is struggling in any way with something like this, or bring more attention to the disease in hopes of finding a cure or anything that can be of service to anybody else, I think is really important.
Rumer Willis’ Update Is Far More Hopeful Than 1 Year Ago
In the years since announcing the actor’s retirement, Rumer and the rest of Bruce Willis’ family, including ex-wife Demi Moore, have frequently offered hopeful updates about his health. Whether in interviews or sharing sweet videos and images on social media of the Die Hard actor spending time with his family while managing his diagnosis, they have all strove to keep the general atmosphere feeling hopeful and encouraging. The duo have also shared updates on the exact state of his condition, announcing in early 2023 that he had since been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, which shares similar symptoms of aphasia in challenges with language, comprehension and communication.
Rumer Willis’ latest update, though, is a far more hopeful one regarding Bruce Willis than audiences were given last year by Moonlighting creator Glenn Cordon Caron. While doing interviews to promote the beloved dramedy’s long-awaited streaming premiere, Caron had indicated that Willis was largely “incommunicative” and “not totally verbal“, while also lamenting that the once “voracious reader” was unable to read in the same way. See what Caron previously shared below:
The process [to get ‘Moonlighting’ onto Hulu] has taken quite a while and Bruce’s disease is a progressive disease, so I was able to communicate with him, before the disease rendered him as incommunicative as he is now, about hoping to get the show back in front of people. My sense is the first one to three minutes he knows who I am. He’s not totally verbal; he used to be a voracious reader — he didn’t want anyone to know that — and he’s not reading now. All those language skills are no longer available to him, and yet he’s still Bruce. When you’re with him, you know that he’s Bruce, and you’re grateful that he’s there, but the joie de vivre is gone.
Though Rumer doesn’t explicitly state whether Bruce Willis‘ symptoms have improved in the past year, her assurance that he is currently in a good place is sure to come as a welcome update for longtime fans of the actor. Whether it be his breakout turn in Moonlighting, his acclaimed legacy as John McClane in the Die Hard franchise or underappreciated work in the likes of Rian Johnson’s Looper, it’s easy to understand why Willis has amassed the level of support he has. And with his family not only consistently sharing updates on his health, but also raising awareness for his condition, one can hope this leads to meaningful advancements in healthcare both for Willis and others.
Source: Today
