Bruce Willis' daughter Tallulah Willis has penned a heartbreaking essay about her father's dementia diagnosis.
The 68-year-old actor - known for the Die Hard franchise - had initially been diagnosed with aphasia in 2022 - which affects one's speech and language, before his family disclosed that he is also living with frontotemporal dementia, which was diagnosed when his symptoms "worsened".
The Sixth Sense star has remained largely out of the spotlight since news of his health was made public, but his blended family frequently shares updates about him on social media.
Now, his 29-year-old daughter wrote an emotional first-person essay for Vogue, opening up about her father's deteriorating health and detailing how she’d known something was wrong with him "for some time".
"My family announced in early 2022 that Bruce Willis was suffering from aphasia, a brain-mediated inability to speak or to understand speech, and we learned earlier this year that that symptom was a feature of frontotemporal dementia, a progressive neurological disorder that chips away at his cognition and behavior day by day," she began.
"But I’ve known that something was wrong for a long time," The Whole Ten Yards actress continued. "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'"
When that unresponsiveness "broadened", Tallulah - whose mother is Demi Moore - said she "sometimes took it personally," explaining: "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.
The action star's daughter revealed that, while her father was "quietly struggling," she was dealing with her own internal problems such as body dysmorphia and anorexia, and was later diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder - an illness that's "marked by extreme mood fluctuations, instability in interpersonal relationships and impulsivity," per Cleveland Clinic.
"I admit that I have met Bruce’s decline in recent years with a share of avoidance and denial that I’m not proud of," she said. "The truth is that I was too sick myself to handle it."
Tallulah said her dad still knows who she is, "give or take a bad day," and that she tries to "savor that time," however, she sadly admitted that "trials are looming," saying, "this is the beginning of grief".
"There’s this little creature changing by the hour, and there’s this thing happening with my dad that can shift so quickly and unpredictably," the doting daughter wrote, concluding: "It feels like a unique and special time in my family, and I’m just so glad to be here for it."
Recently, Arnold Schwarzenegger shared a moving tribute to Willis during an interview with CinemaBlend. The pair were co-stars in the Expendables franchise and launched the Planet Hollywood restaurant franchise along with Sylvester Stallone when it began in 1991.
"I think that he's fantastic. He ... is a huge, huge star. And I think that he will always be remembered as a great, great star, and a kind man," The 75-year-old Terminator star said of his friend.
Schwarzenegger explained that he understands why Willis chose to retire from acting "under his circumstances, health-wise," but added: "In general, you know, we never really retire. Action heroes, they reload."
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