Her father still breaks into a smile when she walks in, and actress Rumer Willis says those moments are what she holds on to. The 38-year-old, whose parents are “Die Hard” actor Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, spoke about him in an Instagram video on Monday, August 24, 2026, and again in a People interview published the next day. He is 71 and has frontotemporal dementia, or FTD.
Rather than dwell on what the illness has taken, Rumer Willis described a father who seems content and who, in her view, is doing about as well as anyone in his position could — an impression she picks up on when she visits with her three-year-old daughter, Louetta.
“When I get to see him, he sees me and [daughter] Louetta and he starts smiling,” she told People.
“So, there’s so much love and joy and tenderness that still exists there,” she said of her visits. “And in terms of that, I would say that’s a huge win.” Gratitude, she said, is what steadies the family now. “The most important thing for me is that I’m so grateful that I have this time with him for however many years it may be,” she said. “I’m grateful that he seems generally wonderful and, given all of the givens of our situation, that our family is just so loving and together.” There is no map for any of this, she added, because the condition presents differently in every patient.
Where She Finds Strength on Hard Days
The difficult stretches get the same candor from her. In the video she posted to Instagram, she said: “I miss my dad, I miss a different version of who he was. Some days are just so hard.” What she aims for, she explained, is to “prioritize being present with where he is at now,” and she put the balancing act this way: “The truth is, to be strong is learning to deal with both things at the same time.”
How the Diagnosis Unfolded
Rumer Willis took the family’s news public in March 2022, posting on Instagram that her father had been diagnosed with aphasia, a condition that impairs a person’s ability to communicate. That same post said he was stepping back from the career that had meant so much to him.
A clearer picture arrived a year later. The actor’s frontotemporal dementia was announced in February 2023, and the label finally put a precise name to the illness his relatives had been contending with. Language and behavior are what the disease attacks. Memory trouble, slowed speech, personality shifts and declining mental abilities all appear on the symptom list kept by Britain’s National Health Service.
For decades, Bruce Willis ranked among Hollywood’s most recognizable leading men, with “Die Hard,” “The Sixth Sense,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Armageddon,” “The Fifth Element” and “12 Monkeys” to his name. Demi Moore, who was married to him from 1987 to 2000, starred in “Ghost,” “A Few Good Men” and “Indecent Proposal.” Their children are Rumer, Scout and Tallulah.
The Genetic Test She Decided to Take
Watching FTD up close pushed the “House Bunny” star to get a grip on her own health. She has partnered with Function, a health membership offering more than 160 lab tests along with imaging and specialized assessments, and through it she took the APOE genetic test. That test measures the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, a different condition from her father’s: APOE variants are associated with Alzheimer’s, not with frontotemporal dementia, which has its own distinct genetics.
Her daughter is the reason she went looking, she said. She wants to be around for Louetta as long as she can, and staying as healthy as she can for as long as she can is no longer optional.
What Emma Heming Willis Has Said About His Health
She is not the only one in the family talking about it in public. An entrepreneur and author who previously worked as a model, Emma Heming Willis has discussed caring for her husband at length; the couple have been married for 17 years and share two children. She told journalist Diane Sawyer in an ABC News special in August 2025 that she was thankful he remains very much present.
“Bruce is still very mobile, Bruce is in really great health overall, it’s just his brain that is failing him,” she told Sawyer.
His eldest daughter says much the same thing in her own words. A dementia diagnosis brings questions nobody can answer and a timeline nobody can predict, and through all of it Rumer Willis keeps coming back to something simple. Her father is still here. He still smiles when he sees her and Louetta. The family, meanwhile, is making the most of the time they have.