Bruce Willis' wife says star doesn't know he has dementia: 'Blessing and a curse'

The wife of actor Bruce Willis has given a heartbreaking update on the star's dementia battle, revealing he does not know about his diagnosis.

Emma Heming Willis was on the Conversations With Cam podcast when she revealed the star still recognises his family members but is not aware he has a form of dementia.

Heming Willis was speaking with the podcaster overnight when she revealed the new information about the star's battle with frontotemporal dementia.

Watch the video above.

When asked if Willis, 70, knew about his dementia diagnosis, his wife said he had never "connected the dots".

"I think that is the blessing and the curse of this," she said.

"Bruce never tapped it and never connected the dots that he had this disease and I am really happy about that.

"I am really happy that he doesn't know."

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Elsewhere in the interview, Heming Willis clarified that her husband still recognised his family members.

"When someone says to me, 'Does Bruce still know who you are?', Yes he does, because he doesn't have Alzheimer's, he has FTD," she said.

"He has a way of connecting with me and our children that might not be the same... but it's still very beautiful.

"You just learn how to adapt and meet them where they are at."

Elsewhere in the podcast, Heming Willis again addressed the long road to diagnosis, in part because FTD "whispers, it doesn't scream".

"It's really hard to know when Bruce's disease started and where he started to end," she said.

"I don't really have a clear answer on that and I don't think I ever will."

She said her experience was similar to other couples in that their "marriage started falling apart" and she considered divorce before finally landing on a diagnosis.

Heming Willis said the average time between onset of symptoms to diagnosis was three years, and FTD was often misdiagnosed as bipolar, a midlife crisis or depression.

"By the time you have gotten to that diagnosis, a lot of families have fallen apart," she said.

"It just came a point I knew something was up," she said, adding Willis was "not the man I married".

She went to Willis' doctors behind his back with a list of symptoms, prompting him to order scans.

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This resulted in his first diagnosis of the language disorder aphasia in early 2022.

"That diagnosis, we didn't realise, was a symptom of a disease and the FTD diagnosis came later in 2022."

Heming Willis said she remembered going to that doctor's appointment knowing it was going to be the day she would finally have an answer but "I was shocked when the doctor said it was FTD".

While she said "all forms of dementia are horrific and terrible" she knew FTD was the "worst of the worst".

Heming Willis revealed last year that Willis now resides in a separate home to his wife and their two daughters, Mabel, 13, and Evelyn, 11.

She told Diane Sawyer at the time it was necessary for him to move out of the family home into a nearby one-storey house where he receives around-the-clock care.

After receiving backlash over the decision, she told Good Morning America's Michael Strahan it was not up for debate. 

"[It] was the safest and best decision – not just for Bruce, but also for our two young girls. And, you know, it's really not up for a debate," she said.

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