Bruce Willis and Rumer Willis. (Photo by Getty)
Rumer Willis has shared a new health update about her dad, Bruce Willis, amid his dementia battle.
The actress responded to a fan question about the Die Hard star via Instagram Stories on Thursday, August 22.
“He is great. I love him so much. Thank you,” Rumer, 35, wrote as she shared a photo of the father-daughter duo holding hands.
Bruce’s family shared in 2022 that the Sixth Sense actor, 69, had been diagnosed with aphasia, a disorder that affects how a person is able to communicate.
Happy family! Bruce Willis and wife Emma Heming’s life is full of bliss, love and lots of laughs — and they have the photos to prove it. The Die Hard actor and Malta-born model met in 2007 at a mutual trainer’s gym. They tied the knot two years later at their home in Turks and […]
“To Bruce’s amazing supporters, as a family we wanted to share that our beloved Bruce has been experiencing some health issues and has recently been diagnosed with aphasia, which is impacting his cognitive abilities,” the family wrote in a statement shared via Instagram in March 2022. “As a result of this and with much consideration Bruce is stepping away from the career that has meant so much to him.”
A year later, the family shared that Bruce’s condition had progressed to a “more specific diagnosis: frontotemporal dementia (known as FTD).”
FTD is an “umbrella term for a group of brain diseases that mainly affect the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain” – areas that are “associated with personality, behavior and language,” according to Mayo Clinic.
In addition to Rumer, Bruce also shares daughters Scout, 33, and Tallulah, 30 with Demi Moore, 61, and is father to daughters, Mabel, 12, and Evelyn, 10, with wife Emma Heming – all of whom have rallied around the star since his diagnosis.
“This experience has brought the whole family even closer together,” a source exclusively shared with Us Weekly in December 2023. “No one knows how much time Bruce has left, so they’re soaking up every moment they get with him.”
In the candid fan Q&A on Instagram, Rumer also divulged that she had split with her boyfriend Dereck Richard Thomas.
The former couple share 1-year-old daughter, Louetta, and Rumer said she was now “single-moming it and coparenting.”
Rumer Willis and musician Derek Richard Thomas debuted their romance nearly one month before announcing they were expecting their first child. The twosome posed for a series of photos together, shared via Instagram in November 2022, in which the guitarist kissed the 90210 alum’s cheek. “♥️🦞🐞🪱🦧♥️,” Willis and Thomas captioned their joint social media upload. […]
Rumer previously shared details about her dad’s sweet bond with his granddaughter.
“He’s so good. I actually got to see him right before I came out [to New York],” Rumer said on the Today show in May. “And Lou is just starting to walk a little bit, and she was walking over to him, and it was so sweet.”
The Sorority Row star added that seeing her dad and mom’s interactions with her daughter brought back fond memories of her own childhood.
“He’s a girl dad, through and through. I saw him with my sisters, my little sisters,” she said. “Honestly, seeing them [Bruce and Moore] with her, it almost unlocks all of these childhood memories because being a grandparent, I think, is the best. They have all of the love and joy without any of the responsibilities. They get to just spoil her.”