The author of the Die Hard actor’s big break, Moonlighting, revealed details about his illness.
Every day, Bruce Willis’ battle with frontotemporal dementia becomes more tough.
The 68-year-old Die Hard star was diagnosed with aphasia last year, but his condition later advanced to FTD, which causes personality changes, difficulty talking, mobility challenges, and less self awareness.
The actor has subsequently withdrawn from public life, with his wife Emma Heming Willis providing updates, and now his close friend and partner, Moonlighting creator Glenn Gordon Caron, has revealed more about Bruce’s current existence.
“I’ve tried very hard to stay in his life,” Glenn told The New York Post, adding, “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.”
“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 continued, adding, “He loved life and… just adored waking up every morning and trying to live life to the fullest.”
“My sense is the first one to three minutes he knows who I am,” he explained, before revealing that the actor “is not totally verbal,” and that he is “seeing life through a screen door.”
“He used to be a voracious reader,” noting: “He didn’t want anyone to know that,” and continued: “He’s not reading now. All those language skills are no longer available to him, and yet he’s still Bruce.”
“When you’re with him you know that he’s Bruce and you’re grateful that he’s there,” he did say, before making a heartbreaking confession: “But the joie de vivre is gone.”
Glenn’s 1980s show Moonlighting, in which Bruce starred as detective David Addison opposite Cybill Shepherd as Maddie Hayes, was the star’s big break, and his wife Emma recently celebrated that the ABC comedy drama is making its streaming debut on Hulu this week.
“I know he’s really happy that the show is going to be available for people, even though he can’t tell me that,” Glenn also told the Post, adding: “When I got to spend time with him we talked about it and I know he’s excited.
“The process [to get Moonlighting on 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,” he further said.
