He was also Rachel’s (Jennifer Aniston) love interest until she encouraged him to open up more, causing a floodgate of repressed emotions. In 2007, Willis did an interview with the Guardian in which he talked about the long term effects of filming the scene. Apparently, the director required very loud blanks to achieve the sound he wanted — yet as a result, Willis endured severe hearing loss. “I suffer two-thirds partial hearing loss in my left ear and have a tendency to say, ‘Whaaa?'” he told the Guardian.
- In a 2021 Instagram live interview with American Addiction Centers, actress Rumer Willis said she used alcohol “as a tool” to become what she thought was the best version of herself (via Yahoo! News).
- Prior to his diagnosis with aphasia, his demeanor was attributed to jet-lag and disinterest in the movies he promoted, but Rumer suggested he just couldn’t hear the questions.
- Willis starred as Trey Kincaid, a man fighting to stop the impending end of the world and the legendary Four Horsemen.
- “With Bruce Willis, there’s almost a model for how he features in these movies,” Daro Film Distribution executive Adam Champ told Vulture in 2021, less than a year before the aphasia revelation.
- Willis had an instantly-recognizable voice and a playful side to his personality, so it made sense that every now and then he’d lend his pipes to projects like “Bruno the Kid,” the “Look Who’s Talking” movies and “Over the Hedge.”
In 2001, the family was struck by tragedy with the death of Robert Willis, who died of pancreatic cancer. Bruce issued a statement that said, “We very much loved our brother. He was not only a good brother but a wonderful son to our parents. We will sorely miss him.” Over its 10-season run, America’s most popular sitcom, “Friends,” had a slew of memorable guest stars. At the top of that list is good ol’ Willis himself, who played Paul Stevens in a three-episode arc in the show’s sixth season. Willis was the father of Ross’s (David Schwimmer) college-age girlfriend, Elizabeth (Alexandra Holden), and wasn’t too thrilled with his little girl dating an older man.
In the months that preceded her rehab stint, Tallulah had struggled with suicidal thoughts. To mark World Mental Health Day in October 2019, she shared a silly video of herself being playful by the pool to illustrate that one’s mental condition is often not reflected on the outside. “When this video was filmed I was 3 months into the deepest suicidal hole I had ever been in. We are not what we show,” she captioned the Instagram post. Tallulah Willis has struggled with her mental health well beyond her skin-picking disorder. In 2022, she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, a mental illness that affects the patient’s ability to regulate their emotions, she revealed in her Vogue essay.
Tallulah had previously opened up about her body dysmorphic disorder, disclosing how she resented looking like Bruce Willis and not Demi Moore. “I believed wholly my ‘masculine’ face was the sole reason for my unlovability,” she captioned a 2021 Instagram post. After raising public concern when she posted a selfie in late 2020, Tallulah downplayed it by contending she loses weight when under stress.
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In later stages, patients may experience physical changes including a loss of bladder and bowel control, slow stiff movements, and difficulty swallowing. Some people suffer from language changes, including using words in the wrong order or incorrectly — calling a sheep a dog, for example, the NHS says. Behavioral changes usually come first, with the sufferer often unaware. These can include gallbladder and alcohol being insensitive or rude, compulsively eating or drinking alcohol, neglecting hygiene, and changing food preferences. There are a variety of FTD symptoms including behavioral changes, language problems, issues with mental abilities, and physical problems, the NHS says. Tallulah often receives fat-shaming messages when she posts photos of her healthy figure.
Yes, we are going to talk about Bruno
The studio utilized motion capture and photo-mapping to copy Willis’s likeness for the main character, and he also provided the voice. Though the studio did hit a few snags along the way, “Apocalypse” was fairly well-received by game critics — even if almost no one remembers it now. Willis told Tarantino that he’d “be happy to do anything” in his upcoming film, and Tarantino took his words to heart.
Willis, who stars in “A Good Day To Die Hard,” which opens in theaters on Feb. 14, has had a long and impressive career, but he still has goals in sight. Willis won an Emmy for “Moonlighting” in his TV days, but he’s not upset if he never adds an Oscar to that shelf. Shepherd’s pregnancy made tensions worse, since the schedule was shifted to accommodate her, and Willis was forced to work longer hours. When the pair had to film a scene that featured an argument between their characters, it devolved into an actual argument. It’s hard to believe that Bruce Willis was once an unlikely action hero. Pint-sized compared to Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo and gentler than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator, Willis was everyone’s last choice to play John McClane in “Die Hard,” according to Showbiz Cheatsheet.
Related: PHOTOS: Demi Moore through the years
Months earlier, she had opened up about her decision to seek help, explaining that she was trying to be kind to herself. “I won’t say I am disappointed in myself because I’m just having a human experience,” she wrote. In August 2024, Willis shared a throwback group activities for recovery photo from 2021 to keep the conversation alive. “Just out here trying to shout to the rooftops that picking HAPPENS!!!” she captioned the Instagram post.
Nonprofit Alcohol for Change to encourage people to abstain from alcohol for a month, according to OprahDaily. The 1991 box-office bomb “Hudson Hawk” was quite the departure from what made Bruce Willis a megastar. Willis had invested much of himself into the production — the film boasts his only writing credit, according to The Independent. De Souza said that Willis “took over the whole movie” and started re-writing the script.
The 1999 supernatural drama “The Sixth Sense” helped return Willis once again to the top of the Hollywood ranks, earning $672 million and later a nomination for best picture at the Academy Awards. It isn’t unusual for a superstar to grow weary of the spotlight, especially with eyes on his or her every move. Shortly after Bruce Willis married Demi Moore in 1987, the couple decided to withdraw from the Hollywood ruckus and found solitude in the small town of Hailey, Idaho. Not far into their relationship, Willis and Moore took an impromptu vacation to Las Vegas, where Willis popped the question. They were married at a small chapel in the Golden Nugget hotel, and the ceremony was officiated by none other than rock ‘n’ roll legend Little Richard.
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One of the biggest perks of fame is who you know, and Bruce Willis knows a lot of people in the biz. In 1994, Willis played boxer Butch Coolidge in “Pulp Fiction,” which would go on to become one of the most influential movies of director Quentin Tarantino’s career. Willis wasn’t the first actor Tarantino had in mind, however, and it was thanks to fellow cast member Harvey Keitel that he was even hired at all. In an interview with GQ in 2013, Willis spoke candidly about his drinking habit. Tallulah Willis undoubtedly had a privileged upbringing, but she’s living proof that some things in life can’t be bought.
Aphasia generally affects how people speak and understand language, but the severity of it varies. Damage to the temporal lobe in the brain affects the ability to understand speech; additional damage to the frontal lobe affects the ability to speak. It’s unclear to what extent Willis is affected, but as expert Swathi Kiran writes in The Independent, most people affected by aphasia have trouble recalling words. Such films were throwbacks to box office fare of the ’80s and ’90s, sometimes featuring stars of the era in a limited capacity, but enough that producers can put a certain face and name on the poster. Before his diagnosis and retirement, Willis had been facing increasingly-loud displeasure from certain corners of the pop culture landscape, wondering how the star of “Die Hard” had become the king of Redbox.
About a year after the public disclosure of these medical issues, the actor’s family shared an silexan vs xanax update via a statement issued by the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration. Willis had been further diagnosed with frontotemporal degeneration, a difficult-to-pinpoint, often overlooked form of early-onset dementia that progressively worsens. According to the Los Angeles Times, the aphasia diagnosis and subsequent retirement arrived after he had demonstrated diminished abilities in the previous few years. Collaborators on film sets reported Willis seeming unaware, out of sorts, and having such difficulty remembering and delivering his lines that scripts would be edited on the fly to accommodate the actor.
Though his speaking issues were a source of insecurity for Willis, he managed to make it work. “So I was popular in that sense, but inside I was really shook up by the fact that I couldn’t get rid of this stutter.” Through Bruce Willis considers himself a proud New Jersey native, he was actually born in West Germany. His father, David Willis, was a military man who was stationed in the city Idar-Oberstein at the time of Bruce’s birth in 1955. Two years later, David Willis was discharged and relocated with his family to Carney’s Point, New Jersey (via Biography.com). See today’s front and back pages, download the newspaper, order back issues and use the historic Daily Express newspaper archive.
According to reports, Willis abandoned his spokesperson role in 1988 when it was clear that his drinking was becoming an issue. The famed actor joined Alcoholics Anonymous and went entirely sober – though he told GQ that he now occasionally indulges in a glass of wine with dinner. Bruce Willis’ daughter has had her own issues with alcohol, which is difficult for any parent to witness.