Bruce Willis's close friend, Moonlighting creator Glenn Gordon Caron, has shared an update on the director's health amid his ongoing battle with dementia.
The Die Hard star, 68, has remained largely out of the limelight since going public with his diagnosis, after initially revealing he was living with aphasia, which affects a person's communication and speech.
His family later confirmed that he had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, leading to him having to retire from his acting career.
Now, Glenn has opened up about Bruce's current condition, after trying his best to visit his friend ever month since he was diagnosed in March 2022.
He told The New York Post: "I’m not always quite that good but I try and I do talk to him and his wife [Emma Heming Willis] and I have a casual relationship with his three older children. I have tried very hard to stay in his life."
Revealing how Bruce has changed as the condition progresses, he added: "The thing that makes [his disease] so mind-blowing is [that] if you’ve ever spent time with Bruce Willis, there is no one who had any more joie de vivre than he.
"He loved life and … just adored waking up every morning and trying to live life to its fullest."
Glenn described Bruce as "seeing life through a screen door", adding: "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."
Tragically, he added: "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."
Before Bruce's condition progressed to where it is now, Glenn revealed that he told him that their ABC series Moonlighting was going to be streamed on Hulu, and said it made the actor "really happy that the show is going to be available for people", although he was not able to tell him that personally.
"When I got to spend time with him we talked about it and I know he’s excited," he added.
The series gave Bruce his big break in 1985 as he starred as detective David Addison, and it has taken a long while for the series to be made available on the streaming service.
Glenn explained: "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. I know it means a lot to him."
Frontotemporal dementia is a progressive condition and Bruce's wife Emma has kept his fans up to date with how he is doing since it was discovered.
Emma, 45, who shares daughters Mabel, 11, and Evelyn, nine, with the action star, recently told Today's Hoda Kotb: "Dementia is hard.
"It’s hard on the person diagnosed, it’s also hard on the family. And that is no different for Bruce, or myself, or our girls. When they say this is a family disease, it really is."
She described herself as her husband's 'care partner' and admitted that it was a "blessing and a curse" when he was finally diagnosed after a year of searching for answers to his symptoms.
Emma explained: "To finally understand what was happening, so that I could be into the acceptance of what is. It doesn’t make it any less painful, but just being … in the know of what is happening to Bruce makes it a little easier."
