It’s been over a year since Bruce Willis announced his retirement from acting due to his aphasia diagnosis, and his family has been keeping everyone around the world about how it has progressed as the months pass. Recently, the actor’s daughter, Tallulah Willis shared her side of the story when it came to her father’s condition.
Willis shared her recount of events through Vogue Magazine, from when her family decided to announce Bruce’s retirement, to what she’s feeling recently. Tallulah recounts knowing that her father was suffering for a long time. The family previously joked about how “Die Hard ruined their father’s hearing,” hence why he was somewhat unresponsive.
“But I’ve known that something was wrong for a long time. It started out with a kind of vague unresponsiveness, which the family chalked up to Hollywood hearing loss: “Speak up! Die Hard messed with Dad’s ears.””
As time went on, Willis shared how she took her father’s condition personally due to his unresponsiveness and how it affected her mentally. She then claimed that it might be because she isn’t beautiful on the outside and that her father no longer found her interesting. She admitted that her assumptions were false and that wasn’t the case, but at the time, it hit her hard. Willis revealed that she wasn’t in a good mental state when her father’s health started to decline. She claimed that she was “too sick to handle it” since she was suffering from anorexia nervosa and that she went to get treatment at age 25.
Eventually, she became well enough to deal with her father’s condition. She claimed that she’s begun to pay attention to things that she didn’t use to before, and would rummage through family photos and old voicemails. Eventually, she began to build a record of her interactions with her father.
“Every time I go to my dad’s house, I take tons of photos—of whatever I see, the state of things. I’m like an archaeologist, searching for treasure in stuff that I never used to pay much attention to. I have every voicemail from him saved on a hard drive. I find that I’m trying to document, to build a record for the day when he isn’t there to remind me of him and of us.”
Her tale came ended on a slightly more positive note, as her focus is now on finding ways to make her father feel comfortable. She says that he still hasn’t forgotten her, despite his condition. She believes that in a different life, the two of them could have gotten along, and it’s still possible today if they had more time.
“I keep flipping between the present and the past when I talk about Bruce: he is, he was, he is, he was. That’s because I have hopes for my father that I’m so reluctant to let go of. I’ve always recognized elements of his personality in me, and I just know that we’d be such good friends if only there were more time….
…And now that I’m feeling better I ask myself, How I can make him more comfortable? It wasn’t easy growing up in such a famous family, struggling as I did to find a patch of light through the long shadows my parents cast. But more and more often I feel like I’m standing in that light.”
It’s unfortunate that Bruce Willis is suffering, but its comforting to know that his family are trying their best to keep him comfortable. He was in the industry for more than 40 years before his retirement, with his final project, Assassin finally out. Asides from his family, other celebrities, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, have chimed in on the actor’s condition.