Bruce Willis is ‘not totally verbal’ due to dementia diagnosis, Glenn Gordon Caron says
Bruce Willis’ good friend has revealed the action star’s health has taken a sharp decline amid his dementia battle. Photo / Getty Images
Bruce Willis’ dementia battle has reportedly taken a heartbreaking turn, leaving the actor struggling to communicate.
Speaking to the New York Post, the 68-year-old Die Hard actor’s friend, Glenn Gordon Caron, said he had noticed a sharp decline in Willis’ health during his monthly visits.
“I have tried very hard to stay in his life,” Caron said. “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.”
The director went on to say Willis might be the same person, but it’s as if he is “seeing life through a screen door” and noted it’s only the first one to three minutes where the actor recognises his friend. He also said the actor was unable to do his favourite day-to-day activities like reading.
“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.”
“When you’re with him you know that he’s Bruce and you’re grateful that he’s there,” he noted, “but the joie de vivre is gone.”
Caron and Willis worked together on the ABC series Moonlighting before the actor was diagnosed with aphasia last year, and then dementia earlier this year.
Since then, his wife, Emma Heming Willis, has given many heartbreaking updates on his diagnosis, most recently on Today.
When asked if he was aware of his condition, Heming told co-host Hoda Kotb: “It’s hard to know.”
The 45-year-old model — who has daughters Mabel, 11, and 8-year-old Evelyn with Bruce — admitted her husband’s condition has been “hard” on everyone around him, including his three adult daughters with ex-wife Demi Moore.
Bruce Willis, 68, is pictured for the first time since his wife's heartbreaking update https://t.co/RF8H4o9oJ0 pic.twitter.com/dcvRXgapdC
— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) September 26, 2023
She grew emotional as she said: “What I’m learning is 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.”
Willis also has daughter Rumer, 35, with Moore — to whom he was married from 1987 to 2000 — while he and Heming have Mabel and Evelyn together.