Sad truth behind Bruce Willis’ final on-screen performances

He’s one of the most revered actors in Hollywood, but as his health deteriorated he was determined to remain working.

Whether he’s single-handedly taking down terrorists in the Die Hard franchise or evading mobsters in Pulp Fiction, Bruce Willis can be counted on to win any screen battle.

Sure, he has sought to challenge his singlet-wearing, against-the-odds hero reputation with memorable performances in films such as Look Who’s Talking, The Sixth Sense and Death Becomes Her, but Willis will always be best known as the guy who saves the day.

That’s perhaps why the cinematic strongman’s diagnosis with frontotemporal dementia came as such a shock to his fans around the world when it was announced by his family in February 2023.

Willis, seen here at the premiere of animated hit Over the Hedge in 2006, had one of the most successful careers in Hollywood. Picture: AFP

After a career spanning 40 years – first making his mark in the TV series Moonlighting in the 1980s – the veteran actor was forced to retreat from the spotlight in March 2022 due to his deteriorating health.

This difficult and private battle will be detailed in his wife Emma Heming Willis’s upcoming memoir The Unexpected Journey, due to be released in September.

Before making his condition public, Willis had found ways to soldier on with his acting, having directors scale down his dialogue and getting a trusted friend to feed him his lines through an earpiece on films such as Assassin and the Detective Knight series.

Willis’s deterioration wasn’t immediately obvious to anyone on-screen or off. Burdened with a crippling stutter as a child, Willis always had a slow speech pattern – so his inner circle wasn’t overly concerned when he began stumbling over his words a little more than usual.

Far from seeing the stutter as a hindrance when embarking on his career, Willis explained to TV host Michael Parkinson that his speech impediment had put him on the path to stardom.

“It’s how I got my sense of humour, because I realised, yeah I stutter, but I could make people laugh by doing stupid stuff,” he shared on Parkinson’s TV show.

Willis celebrating thanksgiving with his daughters Scout and Tallulah amid his heartbreaking health battle. Picture: Instagram

“I also learned that when I got on stage, I magically stopped stuttering. You can still hear a little bit of it in my voice. You’ll still hear that little pause in my voice while I catch myself and think about what I want to say next.”

Now, it’s Heming Willis who will get the last word on his behalf, explaining that she’s written about her 70-year-old husband’s decline to help others headed on the same journey.

“I really wrote the book that I wish someone had handed me the day we got our diagnosis with no hope, no direction … not much,” Heming Willis shared on Instagram, choking back tears.

“Today life looks different for me and our family because I was able to put support into place.”

After the death of 95-year-old screen legend Gene Hackman and his wife, pianist Betsy Arakawa, in February this year, Heming Willis urged her social media followers to see the tragedy as “a teaching moment” about the toll of caring for people with dementia.

Willis in scene from film Hostage on Tubi. Picture: Supplied

Like Heming Willis, who turns 47 this month, 65-year-old Arakawa had been caring for her much older Hollywood star husband as he was ravaged by Alzheimer’s disease. The double Oscar-winner died after Arakawa suddenly passed away, leaving Hackman alone in their home and unable to fend for himself.

“Caregivers need care too,” Heming Willis said in her post. “They are vital. And it’s so important that we show up for them so that they can continue to show up for their person.” Willis certainly has a village of support around him, including his ex-wife Demi Moore and their three adult daughters, Rumer, 36, Scout, 33, and Tallulah, 31. Oscar-nominee Moore has remained close to her ex since they finalised their divorce 25 years ago, even bunkering down with him and their daughters during the pandemic. The women are also regular fixtures at important milestones for Heming Willis’s two daughters with Willis, Mabel, 13, and Evelyn, 11. In an interview with CNN, Moore admitted that watching her ex’s decline has been difficult for all of them.

Willis alongside Megan Fox in one of his last ever om-screen appearances. Picture: Supplied.

“But there is also great beauty and gifts that can come out of it,” she added. “It’s so important for anyone dealing with it to meet them where they are at.”

Celebrate Willis’s remarkable career by watching these three films now streaming on Tubi. The Player: Having joked that he was “tired of running down the street with a gun in my hand” on Parkinson, Willis poked fun at his action-man persona with a cameo as himself in this black comedy about Hollywood directed by Robert Altman.

Hostage: Willis teams up with his then teenage daughter Rumer in this film about a traumatised police hostage negotiator, who is forced back into action when his own family is kidnapped.

Midnight In The Switchgrass: Based on the true story of Texas’s most dangerous serial killer, Willis and Megan Fox play FBI agents determined to hunt him down.

Now streaming on Tubi.

Originally published as Sad truth behind Bruce Willis’ final on-screen performances