Bruce Willis’s wife Emma Heming Willis has spoken out over a “very common misconception” about the Die Hard star’s dementia.
Model and entrepreneur Emma, 48, has been an advocate raising awareness about the Pulp Fiction actor’s condition since he was diagnosed with aphasia in 2022 and with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) the following year.
She has cleared up some confusion surrounding Willis’s current state, clarifying that FTD is not Alzheimer’s – meaning he remembers key details about his life, including the identity of his family members around him.
According to the NHS, FTD affects behaviour and language, and gets worse over time.
open image in gallery“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 told the The Bossticks podcast on Monday (15 June).
“I think that’s a very common misconception that, when you think of dementia, we think of memory loss.”
She said that FTD is different from Alzheimer’s, stating: “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.”
She said she is “consistently in grief” as “what you experience with any form of dementia is it just takes”.
“You know, these diseases, they take and they take and they take – sometimes very slowly – and you are grieving different losses all the time.”
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Emma said she has grown more “used to it” in the last four years, explaining that she is “just sitting with it and moving alongside of it”.
In September 2025, Emma hit back at trolls who criticised her decision to move the actor out of their family home as his condition progressed.
open image in galleryShe said the Sixth Sense actor would have wanted their daughters’ lives to be unaffected by adjustments in their living space, and urged people to cut caregivers some slack.
“He would want them to be in a home that was more tailored to their needs, not his needs,” Emma told Diane Sawyer in the ABC special Emma & Bruce Willis: The Unexpected Journey.
“Too often, caregivers are judged quickly and unfairly by those who haven’t lived this journey or stood on the front lines of it,” she said on Instagram after receiving flak online.
Emma described the choice as the “hardest decision”, adding that she expected judgement and criticism, but shared the update as “it creates connection and validation for those actually navigating the realities of caregiving every day”.
“That’s who I share for and so I can build a deeper connection with a community that understands this journey,” she said. Emma added that those who criticise often “don’t have the experience to back it up”, which she said strips their viewpoint of effect.
“The truth is, the opinions are so loud and they’re so noisy, but if they don’t have any experience of this, they don’t get a say.”
Willis is now living with a full-time care team in a one-storey home as his condition develops and his needs become more complex and intensive.
Emma married Willis in 2009, and the couple has two daughters, 13-year-old Mabel and 11-year-old Evelyn.