Her father still breaks into a smile when she walks in with her daughter, and Rumer Willis says that counts for a great deal. The 38-year-old actress, whose parents are “Die Hard” star Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, sat down for a new People interview to describe the shape of daily life these days for her father, 71, who is living with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), then picked the subject back up in an Instagram video shared Monday, August 24, 2026.
Rather than dwell on what has been lost, she said her father seems content and, given the circumstances, is doing about as well as anyone could hope — something she notices when she brings her three-year-old daughter, Louetta, to visit.
“When I get to see him, he sees [daughter] Louetta and me, and he starts smiling,” she told People.
“There’s so much love and joy and tenderness that still exists there,” she added. “And in terms of that, I would say that’s a huge win.” Gratitude runs through the way she describes the family’s footing 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.” Because the condition presents differently in every patient, she added, navigating dementia is largely uncharted territory.
Finding Strength on the Hard Days
She has been just as candid about the harder side of it. “I miss my dad, I miss a different version of who he was. Some days are just so hard,” she said in the video she posted to Instagram on Monday. Her aim, 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.”
Her own life has been in motion, too. Rumer Willis has moved to Nashville, roughly 2,000 miles, after relocating from Los Angeles to Idaho in early 2025. Announcing it on Instagram, she wrote: “Moving your whole life across the country is a leap of faith… They carried two decades of my life across 2,000 miles and set it down in Nashville without a scratch,” adding that it was “a week this emotional.” She was also reportedly temporarily awarded primary physical custody of Louetta in June following her split from Derek Richard Thomas.
A Diagnosis That Came in Stages
What the public learned arrived in pieces. An Instagram post from Rumer Willis in March 2022 disclosed that her father had been diagnosed with aphasia, which robs a person of the ability to communicate; the same post noted that he was stepping back from the career that had meant so much to him.
A sharper answer came the following year. In February 2023, the actor’s frontotemporal dementia was announced, and at last the family had a more specific name for what confronted them. Language and behavior are the disease’s targets, and its symptoms, as catalogued by Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), include memory trouble, slowed speech, personality shifts and declining mental abilities.
For decades, Bruce Willis ranked among Hollywood’s most recognizable leading men, with credits including “Die Hard,” “The Sixth Sense,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Armageddon,” “The Fifth Element” and “12 Monkeys.” 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.
Tallulah Willis married musician Justin Acee on August 8, 2026, at an intimate wedding in Sun Valley, Idaho. Demi Moore posted photos from the dress fitting, captioning them: “So grateful we were able to share this precious event together as a family.”
Why She Took a Genetic Test
Watching FTD up close pushed the “The House Bunny” star into taking charge of her own well-being. Function, a health membership whose offerings run to more than 160 advanced lab tests plus imaging and specialized assessments, is now a partner of hers, and through it she took the APOE genetic test, a measure of her risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. The results, she said, came back “pretty average.” In the August 24 video posted to Function’s Instagram page, she explained: “It just means there is some risk, but it’s not crazy. Companies like Function empower you to put the information in your hands.”
Her daughter is the reason, she said — she wants to be around for Louetta as long as she can. The membership, she said, makes a good starting point for anyone hoping to invest in health and longevity, and staying as healthy as possible for as long as possible is no longer optional for her.
She also said breast cancer runs in her family. “It’s terrifying to get answers sometimes,” she said, adding of genetic results: “when we’re able to see, OK, maybe I’m more predisposed to this, you can just start actively working to reduce inflammation in your body, work on heart health, whatever it is.”
Emma Heming Willis on His Health
Others in the family have spoken publicly as well. An entrepreneur and author who previously worked as a model, Emma Heming Willis shares two children with the actor and has been married to him for 17 years. She has described at length what caring for her husband involves, and during an ABC News special with journalist Diane Sawyer in August 2025 she said she was thankful that 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 said.
His family has reportedly begun making plans to donate his brain to science for research into neurodegenerative disease because of his frontotemporal dementia, though there has been no official statement from the family confirming it.
His eldest daughter lands in much the same place, in her own way. A dementia diagnosis brings questions nobody can answer and a timeline nobody can predict, and through all of it one simple fact is what Rumer Willis keeps returning to. Her father is still here. The smile still comes when he sees her and Louetta, and the time they have left is time the family is making the most of.
