Emma Heming, the wife of Bruce Willis, has explained why she has been candid and forthright about the actor’s struggle with dementia while raising their two young girls.

In 2009, Heming, 46, married Willis, 69, and they have two children together: Evelyn, 10, and Mabel Ray, 12.

Shortly after the Die Hard star resigned from performing owing to his battle with aphasia, a neurological illness that impairs speech and language comprehension, his family announced in February 2023 that he had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD).

She had ‘never tried to sugarcoat’ Willis’ illness to their girls, who had seen his decline over the years, Heming told Katie Couric in Town & Country Magazine.

In order to educate our children and understand more about frontotemporal dementia, she stated: “This disease is misdiagnosed, missed, and misunderstood, so finally getting to a diagnosis was key.”

With their two young girls, Bruce Willis’ wife Emma Heming has explained why she has been candid about the actor’s fight with dementia. The photo was taken in 2018.

For them, I’ve never tried to sugarcoat anything. Bruce has been deteriorating throughout the years as they have grown older. My intention is not to protect them from it.

Our therapist taught me that when kids ask questions, they’re eager to find out the answer. Although this illness is chronic, progressive, and deadly, I would discuss it with the children if we could see that Bruce was having difficulties.

Their daughters “know that Daddy’s not going to get better,” she continued, adding that she doesn’t “like to speak about the terminal side of this with them, nor have they asked.”

“I will not allow FTD to bring down our entire family,” Heming declared. Bruce would not approve of that, and she was committed to supporting the “next family out there.”

She disclosed in another part of the interview that the movie star had trouble speaking early in his cognitive deterioration, but at first she thought it was a repeat of the “severe stutter” he had suffered from as a teenager.

His’severe stutter’ had plagued his youth, she added, until a college theater professor gave him a whole new set of possibilities.

Bruce discovered while learning acting that he could virtually eliminate his stutter when he uttered phrases he had committed to memory from a script.

“That’s what got him into acting,” Emma remarked.

The actor is father to Mabel Ray, 12, (L) and Evelyn, 10, with wife Emma

Heming told Katie Couric in Town & Country Magazine that she had ‘never tried to sugarcoat’ Willis’ illness to their daughters as they had witnessed his decline over the years – pictured with Evelyn

She added that she doesn’t ‘like to speak about the terminal side of this with them, nor have they asked’ but that their girls ‘know that Daddy’s not going to get better’ – Willis pictured with Mabel as a baby

The actor from Sixth Sense has five children, including Rumer, 36, Scout, 33, and Tallulah, 30 with his ex-wife Demi Moore.

He lived with the stutter all his life, she said, but he became proficient at hiding it in most circumstances.

But in the early stages of her husband’s decline, she found it hard to recognize that something was significantly off with his language skills because of that constant stutter.

According to her, “when his language began to change, it [seemed like it] was just a part of a stutter, it was just Bruce.” “I never would have imagined that it would be dementia in such a young person.”

The Sixth Sense star and his ex-wife Demi Moore have five daughters together: Rumer, 36; Scout, 33; and Tallulah, 30.

During an interview on The Drew Barrymore Show in September, Moore, 61, provided viewers with an update on the health of her ex-spouse, stating that “given the givens, he is in a stable place.”

Moore, who was married to Willis from 1987 until 2000, talked candidly about how she has helped her kids cope with the family’s ongoing health issues.

Moore stated during the appearance, “I tell my kids that you should meet them where they are.” You focus on who they are right now rather than who they were or what you wish they were.