Actress Rumer Willis is holding on to the small, sweet moments with her father — and she says there are still plenty of them. The 38-year-old, whose parents are “Die Hard” actor Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, described what daily life looks like now for her 71-year-old father, who has frontotemporal dementia (FTD), in a new People interview, and she returned to the subject in an Instagram video shared Monday, August 24, 2026.
Instead of focusing on what has been lost, Rumer Willis said her father appears content and is faring about as well as anyone could hope under the circumstances — something she notices during visits with her 3-year-old daughter, Louetta.
“When I get to see him, he sees me and [daughter] Louetta and he starts smiling,” she told People.
Those moments of recognition, she said, show her that affection, delight and warmth still pass between them — which she counts as a huge win. Gratitude has become the family’s steadying force: what matters most, in her telling, is getting this stretch of time with her father, however long it lasts, and knowing everyone has stayed close and loving throughout. Navigating dementia, she added, is largely uncharted territory, since the condition presents differently in every patient.
Finding Strength on the Hard Days
Rumer Willis has been equally open about the harder side of it. In the video she posted to Instagram on Monday, she admitted that she misses her dad — or, more precisely, an earlier version of him — and that some days are simply tough. Her focus, she explained, is on meeting him where he is today, and she said genuine strength means carrying both of those realities at once.
A Diagnosis That Came in Stages
The family first went public in March 2022, when Rumer Willis used Instagram to reveal her father’s aphasia diagnosis, a condition that impairs a person’s ability to communicate. In the same post, she noted that he was stepping back from the career that had meant so much to him.
The following year brought more clarity. In 2023, the actor’s frontotemporal dementia was announced, a diagnosis Rumer Willis has called more specific. The disease targets language and behavior, and Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) counts memory trouble, slowed speech, personality shifts and declining mental abilities among its symptoms.
Bruce Willis spent decades as one of Hollywood’s most recognizable leading men, appearing in “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.
Why She Took a Genetic Test
Seeing the effects of FTD up close pushed “The House Bunny” star to take charge of her own well-being. She has teamed up with Function, a health membership that offers more than 160 advanced lab tests along with imaging and specialized assessments, and used it to take the APOE genetic test, which measures her risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Louetta is the reason, she said: she wants to stick around for her daughter as long as she can. Rumer Willis noted that a standard doctor’s visit lasts roughly five minutes, hardly enough time to ask meaningful questions or get meaningful answers, and she described the membership as a good starting point for anyone hoping to invest in health and longevity. Remaining as healthy as she can for as long as she can, she said, is no longer optional.
Emma Heming Willis on His Health
She is not the only family member talking publicly. Emma Heming Willis, a model who has been married to the actor for 17 years and shares two children with him, has spoken about caring for her husband. In an ABC News special with journalist Diane Sawyer last year, 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.
It is a sentiment his eldest daughter echoes in her own way. For all the uncertainty that comes with a dementia diagnosis — the questions nobody can answer, the timeline nobody can predict — Rumer Willis keeps returning to the same simple fact: her father is still here, he still smiles when he sees her and Louetta, and the family is making the most of the time they have.