Rumer Willis has said that her dad, Bruce Willis, has become more “tender” after he was diagnosed with dementia.
“I’m so grateful I get to go see him,” Rumer, 37, said during an interview with The Inside Edit podcast published Monday. “Even though it’s different now, I’m so grateful.”
She continued: “There’s a sweetness. He’s always been this kind of macho dude and there’s like a — fragile is not the right word but — just a tenderness that maybe being Bruce Willis might not have allowed him in a certain way.”
Bruce, 71, was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia in February 2023, after doctors initially diagnosed him with aphasia in March 2022.
The Die Hard actor receives 24-hour care for the degenerative disease and lives separately from his wife, Emma Heming Willis, and their two young daughters.
Rumer is the eldest daughter of Bruce and The Substance star Demi Moore, who were married from 1987 to 2000. The former couple also had Scout Willis, 34, and Tallulah, 32, together.
Although FTD is considered to be one of the rarest forms of dementia, Rumer said the disease is more “prevalent” than she realized.
“It’s wild to me,” she told podcast host Maeve Reilly during their talk. “So many people come up to me now and they say, ‘My uncle had FTD. My dad had this.’”
Rumer, who is a single mother to her daughter Louetta, shared in an update about her dad’s dementia last November that there are times when he does not remember who she is.
“The truth is that anybody with FTD is not doing great,” she said in part on Instagram. “But he’s doing okay in terms of somebody who’s dealing with frontotemporal dementia, you know what I mean?”
She continued: “The only way I feel like I could answer that in a way that's like he's doing great... How do I say this? It's like those parameters don't really work anymore in my mind, so this is an interesting question.”
Rumer added: “I'm so happy and grateful that I still get to go and hug him. I'm so grateful that when I go over there and give him a hug, whether he recognizes me or not, that he can feel the love I've given him, and I can feel it back from him.”
“That I still see a spark of him and he can feel the love that I'm giving and so that feels really nice.”
