Bruce Willis Stepping Away From Acting Following Aphasia Diagnosis

That's sad. I wonder if he had a stroke or some other neurological condition? It makes sense he's stepping away from acting.

All the controlled substances caught up with him.

Aphasia was the first symptom my mom had of her Alzheimers. She became uncharacteristically quiet, but would still respond to questions. And then slowly she just stopped talking.

Aphasia is usually due to some kind of brain damage. I wonder if he had a stroke at some point too.

He and his wife spent lockdown and holidays with Demi. She probably feels the need to mother him.

Huh, that rumor ended up being true after all.

According to Mayo Clinic, aphasia "is a condition that robs you of the ability to communicate. It can affect your ability to speak, write and understand language, both verbal and written." The group adds that the condition "typically occurs suddenly after a stroke or a head injury. But it can also come on gradually from a slow-growing brain tumor or a disease that causes progressive, permanent damage (degenerative)."

I know he's an asshole, but no one deserves that.

I'm reading that you can get it from a head injury.

Very sad, it's an awful disease. My dad has it.

As stated, preliminary to full blown alzheimers or dementia. The family isn't ready to impart the full diagnosis yet, which is understandable. Sad but it happens to many, Hollywood actors aren't excluded. He is near 70 and has had a great life, will have the best of care as well from here out.

Sad news to be sure, but while Willis has continued to make films, he stepped away from acting quite some time ago.

Chris Rock, you in danger, gurl!

Terrible. Hate to see that happen to anyone.

Demi's roast of him was . . . awkward

While it usually leads to dementia and/or Alzheimer's, it can also be caused by injuries. I wonder if his years of appearing in action films, where he was known to do some of his own stunts, might have contributed. It could be similar to football. If so, the industry could have a problem because this would not only be big name stars, but hundreds if not thousands of stunt actors.

R13 LOL! Not kind, but very true.

I'm surprised more pro footballers don't suffer from aphasia due to their numerous head injuries.

Sorry to hear that; I think he's got a 2nd family with kids that are fairly young. My mom had aphasia at the end of her life & aside from all her physical ailments, it was sad to see her just become unable to respond

R20 I guess that is why he made all those crappy movies that according to a report up the thread he wasn't really up to. He did it to bank money for his care and his family's well being. I do find that admirable.

With some types of personality disorders, all the hatred they radiated outward reverses and attacks the individual. What will Aaron Carter do now?

Cocaine?

I believe it’s usually from a stroke. A friend of mine got it after she had a stroke. Strangely enough, it was her only symptom, she didn’t have any paralysis.

Agagia does not lead to AD. Rather it is one of the symptoms of AD. Aphagia is not a disease. It is a symptom, of usually neurological disease, but of course can be present in someone who has had many large part of the pharynx removed (cancer).

Really sad to hear that. I'm sorry for his family. Especially his kids.

First heard about this here on DL some months back. So many rumors on here turn out to be true.

With that said, sorry to hear this. Bruce had a reputation for being a prick, but I don't wish this on him or his family.

I bet the people at the Razzies are feeling like real pieces of shit about now.

Has his 3 butt ugly daughters commented?

It's possible it's because of the head injury he supposedly suffered after a piece of debris from a stunt sequence struck in the forehead on the set of the movie 'Tears of the Sun' from 2003. He sued the FX company afterwards. No later update, so they probably settled of out court.

He's been having problems with his memory since at least 2015 when he did the stage version of 'Misery'. He had to wear an earpiece so they could feed him his lines.

His second round of daughters are 10 and 8. Luckily he didn't cross paths with Hilaria

Aphasia is caused by some neurological condition, such as Alzheimers dementia, stroke, head injury, etc. None of the news outlets state what is the cause!! Surprised that DL sleuths haven't figured it out.

[quote]Has his 3 butt ugly daughters commented?

I don't know, has they, r29?

The wife, the ex wife, and the 3 adult daughters posted identical messages to Instagram

My mom has aphasia from a stroke and she’s only 50% recovered. It’s still very hard to communicate and have a conversation as I really need to translate what she’s trying to say to anyone. Hell, I don’t know what she’s trying to say half the time.

R28 and here is the response of the Razzies

[quote] The Razzies are truly sorry for #BruceWillis diagnosed condition. Perhaps this explains why he wanted to go out with a bang in 2021. Our best wishes to Bruce and family.

Classy, aren’t they.

His so called "acting" consisted of a facial smirk..and being extremely unpleasant on the set of his movies. Good riddance.

Has Cybil Shepard said anything unpleasant about this yet?

[quote]I'm reading that you can get it from a head injury. —Chris Rock

I guess I'm lucky I didn't get it.

My brother is in the industry and told me a few years ago that people were convinced Willis had dementia. Sad

So the blind items and tabloids were right afterall….

I had aphasia briefly after I got knocked out snowboarding years ago. I remember standing up at the top of the hill and the next memory is waking up in the ski lodge. I tasted blood and my mouth was swollen so I tried to ask my friend if my teeth were all there. I tried asking three times and he just looked at me and asked “what” a few times.

About a half hour later I got my speech back and asked him what I was saying when I was asking about my teeth and he said I was mumbling gibberish. But in my head I was clearly thinking and trying to say “did I knock out any teeth?”

It definitely sucks trying to communicate but not being able to. My mom was ‘fortunate’ that when she had her stroke her speech wasn’t affected, only the left side of her body.

Willis should be financially comfortable enough to not need to act anymore. He can still do other things I guess.

Jessie Eisenberg had him fired from Cafe Society for forgetting lines. Same with Sharon Stone from American Dreamz. Two people who both suffered from strokes and whom could have been treated with a little more sensitivity. God hope such fate never befalls his aspies empathy-free ass.

Has this guy ever won an award ?

I have a gut feeling he didn't have a stroke or brain injury and that this was brought on my dementia.

My dad had dementia due to alcoholism and Willis was a hardcore drunk for decades. My dad also tended to fall when drunk and not remember. I wish people knew the link between excessive drinking and brain damage.

It is real and it can start in your forties or fifties. My dad's Dr saw it frequently.

He's also had head injuries, r47.

It's just Alzheimer's, isn't it.

R49 no, it can be brought on my alzheimers, but when you hear of someone having a stroke or brain injury and needing to re-learn to talk, that's aphasia. I would think they would have said if Bruce's was from a stroke because then he has a chance of recovery. If it's from dementia it will get progressively worse. Sounds like that's the case since he's needed help remembering lines and acted off in interviews for years.

Trumper. Who cares?

On the bright side, he's well on the way to forgetting Cybill Shepherd. How many people would kill for that luxury?

There have been cases of Aphasia caused by COVID.

Why can't he have the opposite condition where he just starts blurting out things uncontrollably, including all of his supposed activities with Aaron Carter?

R52 Haven't they made up, she took part in his comedy central roast

R 52 and 59, Bruce left Cybill in the dust, career wise. Why would he care?

Lucky

His younger daughters are 10 and 8--will Willis even be compos mentis by the time they are adults?

Having kids after your early 40s is so selfish.

I remember when Bruce Willis was replaced on Woody Allen’s “Café Society” by Steve Carell. The official explanation was an unforeseen scheduling conflict (which sounded suspicious because Willis had begun shooting the film), but rumors were rampant that Willis couldn’t remember his lines.

Whachoo talkin’ ‘bout Willis?

No, really. What ARE you talking about?

Did Aaron Carter made a statement yet?

So you're saying he's not available for the Moonlighting reboot?

Are his younger kids unfortunate looking like his older three? I hope for their sake they’re not.

I still want my money back for Sunset.

Terry Jones had a form of aphasia. He couldn't speak at all in his last years.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

I hated Die Hard & Moonlighting, and subsequently him. And he's a trumper. I do like that campy thriller he did with Lesley Ann Warren

Aphasia can be fluent or non fluent. I have a close relative who suffered damage to the left temporal lobe due to military trauma. He speaks, some times quite a lot...but it is not always understandable and sometimes sounds like gibberish. He has frequent word-finding difficulties. He has improved modestly, but he will never get better.

I did some subsequent reading about the condition, and it seemed to indicate that a diagnosed person may be able to regain some of their affected abilities with regular and intense speech/cognitive therapy once diagnosed, and there could also be a spontaneous return of the lost speaking, listening or writing abilities in some cases, at least in the shorter term. That's why it surprised me that his family announced that Bruce, still relatively not very old, didn't communicate there being room for the possibility of it being considered he may return to films way down the road. Since I learned that aphasia can also be the result of events such as a brain tumor, I'm hoping it's not that as I'd imagine the patient in such a situation wouldn't probably be intent on or a candidate for long-term therapy and potential recovery. Plus that aside, this man is now so probably well-off and not a younger actor anymore, and he and his family may have simply discussed the situation and helped him decide that he's financially well off enough to enjoy the rest of his years and time being free from needing to work or to want to work anymore, anyway.

Over 20 sources told me & @MegJamesLAT that for at least 4 yrs, Bruce Willis has grappled w/ his loss of mental acuity on set. He was fed lines thru an earpiece, asked crew where he was, and Lala Kent said he accidentally fired a prop gun in her direction.

Willis was paid as much as $2M for two days of work on most films. His handler, Stephen J. Eads, got a producing credit and $200K per film. His earpiece guy, aspiring actor Adam Huel Potter, was paid $4,150 per week and got on-screen roles in each of Willis' films.

Article

R58, if having kids after the age of 40 is selfish, I want to thank JFK for being so selfish as to father JFK, Jr. past that age.

He needed cute kids after the...others

[quote] With some types of personality disorders, all the hatred they radiated outward reverses and attacks the individual.

Link, please.

He’s good in Pulp Fiction.

R70, so his family went public about it because a story in the LA times was going to come out…..

Oh, did all this come up because he wasn’t there for the Pulp Fiction anniversary gathering at the Oscars?

R77 it's been rumored for months, including on DL

He shaved head to show support for JPS.

He was amazing in The Last Boyscout.

Yeah, it's obvious now that they abruptly announced his retirement when they got word the LA times article was about to be released.

I bet he would've kept working for a while, if not for that. After that article came out, he was going to be uninsurable.

Did Will Smith threaten to leak something so this story would go to the forefront and get him off Hollywood’s front page.

Aphasia is tough, but it's nothing compared to the other "A" disease

Naturally the Qtards are blaming the vaccine despite the rumors of Bruce's decline going back before the pandemic...

We'll get together, have a few head injuries, have a few laughs!

[quote]asked crew where he was

This is scary and more than aphasia. Both my parents developed dementias and suddenly loosing orientation by place or time is a common early symptom and reminders can help. It must be a frightening feeling. Even without reading about the accidental firing of the prop gun, insurability came to mind. As a caretaker, it was a constant and often exhausting job to keep my mother from doing things that might cause harm to herself or damage property. This in a quiet house.

I'll "oh, my" myself. "losing orientation..."

I wouldn't wish this illness on anyone (with the exception of Trump and Putin). But....it doesn't change the fact that Willis has always been a talentless, insecure prick. Listen to the podcast Haileywood. He's a dick.

He was hilarious in Death Becomes Her

Somehow this makes me hate Alec Cuntwin even more and I have zero desire to explain why. Perhaps there are too many fucking reasons.

Hang in there Bruce, but to be honest it doesn't look good. All of the latest photos we are seeing, he does not look at all there.

Poor Cybill. Even though they hated each other back then, they seemed to have patched things up and she even participated in his Comedy Central roast a few years ago. First Peter Bogdanovich and now this.

O R13 you are delightfully terrible. Have a WW.

And sad for Bruce. That is scary to contemplate. Wishing him peace.

Depending on the kind and depth of aphasia he has, he might still have his ability to communicate to some extent. Sad to say, if he does, it likely won't be for long. This is scary for all of us. He might not be having scrambled thoughts in his noggin, but what comes out is literal nonsense. I hope he can at least use the toilet and have some sort of physical joy before that is robbed (MARY!) too. This scares the fuck out of me, and I don't have 1/100th of the money he does to take care of himself.

His wife looks like a darker and younger version of Demi Moore.

[quote]I bet he would've kept working for a while, if not for that. After that article came out, he was going to be uninsurable.

This is sad. He was probably planning on continuing to work for a while, to stash away more money for his younger kids - he has five in total I believe, and the older ones he had with Demi aren't exactly rocket scientists with steady jobs. It's a shame this had to happen now. If he was safe on set and being properly 'handled' by his people, there's no reason he shouldn't have been able to carry on a bit longer.

R96, exactly but they are blaming his people and calling it elder abuse when he probably wanted to support his family before it’s too late.

Something tells me the family is blowing smoke with this aphasia diagnosis. It's probably much worse. Poor guy.

I wanted to read the LAT article at r71 but the link didn't work for me unfortunately. So it appears people thought his family and team were possibly exploiting him? Hence the expose and current admission by the family. That's unfortunate - if he had decent handlers with him on set at all times, and was safe and being paid, what was the harm? He was doing what he loved and had done for years.

His toxic narcissism is finally catching up to him?

He has 11 direct-to-video movies coming up this year and 15 from 2019-2021. He was really desperate to earned money to support everyone before it gets worse for him.

His younger daughters are very cute - sad how this is happening when they are just in elementary school.

Also wish it was Alec.

He apparently said to people on the set of his last film - "I know why you're here but why am I here" repeatedly. That sounds like dementia.

Then he started saying stuff like "I'm switching baristas".

I know someone who has aphasia. He speaks very slowly an nd with difficulty. That really annoyed me at first - until i found out his condition that resulted from a stroke.

Sad.

I wonder if they're going wth Aphasia and not the very obvious fact that he has dementia due to liability issues? Surely someone was fudging his health check ups for insurance purposes. I mean he was misfiring guns....

He’s fine, he sends his applesauce.

I think if it was dementia, he would be in even worse shape by this point. He's been having issues for at least seven years now and has been very noticeable for at least four years.

I'm sure everyone just looked the other way due to his name still being a draw, but when a respected, major newspaper puts it all out there, there was going to be no more of that.

He has enough cash and assets to have generous trust funds for all of his kids. They might not be able to afford to lead luxurious lifestyles for their whole lives on it, but will no doubt live very comfortably for it. Better than 99% of the rest of the world.

Well, can Bruce still get it up? And am I still in his will?

That is the way that dementia works - it is a progressive disease. R109.

It is dementia. The memory loss, etc. He has dementia.

I think that’s exactly what’s going on R107 and the family is not admitting he dementia.

This is a result of all the times Cybill slapped Bruce on the face on Moonlighting.

When all else fails, blame Cybil Shepard, heaven knows Christine Branski has been doing it for decades.

☝🏼 Eyes don’t look like he’s fully there

He stepped away from acting DECADES ago.

Ha ha ha ha ha?

His "family's" PR are all over this place today trying to prime the "he just wanted to keep working for his family!"

They say it multiple times in each of the 5 threads on this topic here to force the conversation back into that groove.

Obviously they are taking evasive maneuvers because they are scared of lawsuits or official enquiries.

R119 I mean it makes total sense. There are a lot of bad rumors about him but he has never been accused of not providing for his girls. I’m 99% sure he told his agent to keep him working as long as possible to bank as much as he can. It is exactly what I would do in that situation.

So can I keep the gifts and cash? Bruce is too old now to fuck and to get fucked by anyway. I'm movin' on.

I like that Bruce doesn’t have a jealous bone in his body and appeared at several events with Demi and Ashton, went to their wedding and have photoshoots together.

He was just happy to be rid of such a high-maintenance, needy wacko.

I thought it was strange that he was quarantining with Demi and their kids in another state from his wife and young kids.

R124 I figured it was because we were told to keep old people and young people separate. The difference between his age and those of his young kids is more like a grandparent and grandchild.

How do we know it wasn't Demi fucking that kid?

Didn't she get thrown off the soap because of robbing the cradle?

I’d quit acting too if my films had Lala Kent as the costar. How embarrassing.

R124 - I read that the second wife and their two kids were there, as well. I really feel for those kids having to witness their father's decline. It's hard enough for adult family members, but watching daddy inexplicably (to young minds) turn into someone else? Eh. 😔

Sounds like Bruce is living 12 Monkeys.

R127 her baby daddy financed about 20 of the shitty movies

New wife? Bruce and Emma have been together for more than 15 years longer than Bruce’s relationship with Demi.

R128, they weren’t. I’m guessing it was to keep him safe.

I'm not fussed because.

1. I have only watched a total of 15 minutes of him on TV over 24 years.

2. I have paid nothing to him in cinema tickets.

Thanks for letting us know R133

The story was that one of the little daughters had a medical emergency and they had to be cleared in LA before joining everyone in isolation