Bruce Willis was seen being driven around Los Angeles by a caretaker days after his wife, Emma Heming Willis, said the actor had been moved into a separate home to better meet his care needs.
The 70-year-old actor sat in the passenger seat of an SUV on Friday, wearing a blue shirt over a white T-shirt, a billed cap and dark sunglasses. The sighting came after Heming Willis, 47, told publications that she had arranged a full-time care team following his diagnosis with frontotemporal dementia (FTD).
Heming Willis said moving her husband into a nearby house has allowed friends and family to visit more freely and made it easier for their children to have a normal home environment. “It was the right move — for him, for our girls, for me,” she told The Times while promoting her book, The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope and Yourself on the Caregiving Path.
She told People that the separate residence helps because Willis does not do well with too much noise and the arrangement allows their daughters, Mabel, 13, and Evelyn, 11, to have playdates and sleepovers without having to tiptoe around his needs. “The girls don’t need him to be this or do that. They have really adapted to his disease and they know how to move around him. It’s beautiful, but it’s hard for them. They miss him,” she said.
Heming Willis said she and her husband have developed “our own language” to communicate and that care now is focused on sitting with him, walking with him and listening as he tries to verbalize in his own way. She added that moving him out of the family home made it easier for other relatives and friends to spend time with him without the added pressure of managing visitors in her house.
Willis has three older daughters from his marriage to actress Demi Moore — Rumer, 37, Scout, 34, and Tallulah, 31 — who also can visit the actor at his new nearby residence, Heming Willis said.
Willis and his family disclosed his FTD diagnosis in February 2023 after he had been diagnosed with aphasia in the spring of 2022. Frontotemporal dementia is a progressive brain disorder that can affect language, behavior and personality; Heming Willis told The Times that it has affected Willis’s ability to understand and express language.
Heming Willis has also faced criticism for the decision to move Willis into a separate home, but she has defended the choice as necessary to support the whole family while preserving her role as his partner. In her interviews she emphasized that the change opened up Willis’s world and allowed different relatives to have their own experiences with him.
The family has publicly discussed the diagnoses and the adjustments they have made since the initial announcement. Heming Willis has written about the caregiving challenges and adaptations in her book, which addresses practical and emotional aspects of supporting a loved one with a progressive neurological condition.
The sighting in Los Angeles and the couple’s statements reflect a deliberate caregiving strategy the family says is meant to balance Willis’s needs with those of his wife and children while maintaining opportunities for continued contact and visits.