Bruce Willis was photographed riding through Los Angeles this week after his wife, Emma Heming Willis, revealed the actor is now living in a separate residence where he receives round-the-clock care for frontotemporal dementia.
The 70-year-old actor appeared relaxed in the front passenger seat as a driver took their vehicle in for a car wash, wearing dark sunglasses as the pair travelled through sunny Los Angeles.
Willis was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) in 2023 and has largely stepped back from public life and his acting career since. In a new book, The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope, and Yourself on the Caregiving Path, Emma Heming Willis recounts the decision to move her husband into a separate home that can provide more tailored, around-the-clock support.
"We’ve come to a point in Daddy’s disease where the care he requires is changing. It has to be more tailored to his every need," she wrote, describing how she told the couple’s daughters about the move. She said she tried to frame the new residence as a "second home" for daughters Mabel, 13, and Evelyn, 11, and emphasized that the change was made with Willis’s safety and the children’s needs in mind.
In interviews and passages from the book, Heming Willis described the emotional toll of the diagnosis and the early days that followed. She said the family received the diagnosis with relief that it explained puzzling behavioral changes, but that the medical encounter left them with little practical guidance. "I was grateful to get to a diagnosis, but there is no cure for this disease, and being sent on our way with no support, no nothing was really traumatic," she wrote.
Heming Willis said she initially felt isolated and overwhelmed as the primary caregiver, balancing her husband’s needs with raising their young daughters and protecting the family’s privacy. She said she relied on medical experts, connected with other caregivers and began researching the condition herself, and that those experiences motivated her to write the book as a resource for other families facing neurodegenerative disease.
The move to a separate residence, which Heming Willis described as a difficult but necessary decision, follows years of increasing care needs related to FTD, a condition that can erode language and personality. The family has sought to maintain contact and involvement: a family source told the Daily Mail that Willis’s adult daughters from his previous marriage have been spending time with him, and that he "lights up" when he sees his children. The source added that Willis has been "going downhill fast" and that some changes include difficulty recognizing faces.
Willis and Heming Willis have been married 16 years and share two daughters. His blended family also includes adult daughters Rumer, 37, Scout, 34, and Tallulah, 31, from his earlier marriage to Demi Moore; family members have been reported to be visiting and spending time with Willis as his condition progresses.
Heming Willis said the experience shaped her advocacy for better resources and earlier diagnosis for families confronting dementia and other neurodegenerative illnesses. In the book and interviews, she urged greater support and clearer guidance from medical providers, and said she wrote the book she wished she had been given at the time of her husband’s diagnosis.
Representatives for Willis did not immediately respond to requests for comment.