Rumer Willis has taken a genetic test to find out whether she carries an elevated risk of Alzheimer’s disease — a decision driven by watching her father, action star Bruce Willis, lose himself to frontotemporal dementia. The 38-year-old shared the results in an Instagram video posted Monday (Aug. 24, 2026), explaining that she opted for APOE screening through her partnership with the health company Function.
Her outcome, she said, was “pretty average,” which she interpreted to mean “there is some risk but it’s not crazy.” Even so, waiting on the answer wasn’t easy. It is “terrifying to get answers sometimes,” she said, before adding that she would still choose knowledge over ignorance: “when you have information, it’s power.”
Dementia isn’t the only thing running through her family tree. Speaking with People, the actress and singer noted that relatives on her side have battled breast cancer as well. Too many people, she argued, treat good health as a given, and she pushed for modest, early interventions so there isn’t “such a steep fall off the cliff as you get older.” Function, the membership she works with, offers imaging, specialized assessments and more than 160 lab tests.
The grief underneath all of it is not abstract. “I really miss my dad, I miss a different version of who he was. There are some days that are so hard,” she said. Her approach, she explained, is to “prioritise being present with where he’s at now,” and she framed the balancing act this way: “to be strong is to learn to deal with both things at the same time.”
Rumer, the eldest of the “Die Hard” actor’s five daughters, has said she considers it “important” to discuss the disease that ended her father’s career publicly. In an exclusive interview with OK!, she described the choice as “a gift to be vulnerable.” She said she can barely go anywhere without someone stopping her — some to pass along good wishes for her dad, others to describe a relative facing the same diagnosis. FTD, she said, is “a rampant illness that has never been talked about,” and the last couple of years have brought an “outpouring of love” toward her family.
She also highlighted The Emma & Bruce Willis Fund, the research and caregiver-support initiative her stepmother, Emma Heming Willis, started in March. Rumer, who has a daughter, Louetta, with her ex Derek Richard Thomas, said she wants the fund to give other families answers, and she hopes a cure surfaces while she’s still alive to see it.
Her openness arrives on the heels of a family milestone that reduced strangers to tears this summer. On August 8, 2026, Bruce Willis attended the wedding of his youngest daughter, Tallulah Willis, and Vogue published images from the day on August 14. The photos show the 71-year-old with an arm wrapped around the 32-year-old bride ahead of her marriage to musician Justin Acee.
In one black-and-white frame, he holds Tallulah on one side and clasps his new son-in-law’s hand on the other. The bride, an actress and filmmaker, shared the shot herself and called it “a tender moment” with her father and Justin at the start of the wedding weekend. Her dad appeared relaxed and kept smiling, dressed in loose trousers, a collared shirt with short sleeves and a hat of woven straw. Tallulah wore a made-to-order cream Balenciaga gown for the ceremony, held at the family’s Idaho estate before a small gathering of loved ones.
A Wedding at Home, Layered With Significance
An elopement was on the table, but Tallulah rejected it in favor of the land that raised her. She told Vogue the property was where she ran wild and became a dreamer, and said Justin now feels woven into it. From the beginning of their romance, the pair agreed they would keep choosing each other every day. Their engagement was announced on Instagram in December 2024.
Minutes before the processional came a twist nobody had warned her about. Tallulah spotted her mother in the front row wearing a knowing grin. A single guitar riff played over the speakers, then Coldplay frontman Chris Martin began singing a song he’d recorded just for the couple, opening with the names of the bride and groom heading down the aisle. Tallulah said her jaw dropped in disbelief. Her mother, she later revealed, had engineered the whole thing, and the newlyweds ended up laughing from pure joy. The weekend, she said, outstripped anything she had allowed herself to picture, leaving her flooded with gratitude as this chapter opened.
Rumer, Scout, 35, and Tallulah were born during Willis’ marriage to actress Demi Moore, which ran from 1987 to 2000. Moore, 63, arrived in a flowing blue satin dress and put her name to the marriage license as one of two people who formally witnessed it; Scout served as the second. Willis married Emma Heming Willis, an entrepreneur who previously worked as a model, in 2009, and together they are bringing up daughters Mabel, 14, and Evelyn, 12.
A Long Retreat From Public View
Sightings of the actor have been scarce since his health began failing. Aphasia was diagnosed in March 2022, prompting his retirement from film. In February 2023, his family said the condition had progressed to frontotemporal dementia — a cluster of neurological disorders that damages the brain’s frontal and temporal lobes, the regions governing language, behavior and personality.
Heming Willis, who serves as his caregiver, hasn’t softened her account of the toll. In September 2025 she published “The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope, and Yourself on the Caregiving Path,” which argued for broader support for caregivers across the country. In the January 28 installment of the “Conversations with Cam” podcast, she said she’s grateful her husband is unaware of his own diagnosis. Anosognosia — the inability to accurately perceive one’s own condition — counts among the disease’s neurological symptoms.
Last year, as his symptoms worsened, she moved him out of the family home. In August 2025 she said the choice was made for their daughters’ sake, explaining that he would want the girls in a house organized around their needs rather than his. He now lives in a one-story residence staffed by caregivers 24 hours a day.
Her own 50th birthday in June presented a quandary. On “Making Space,” the podcast hosted by “Today” co-host Hoda Kotb, Heming Willis said earlier this month that she hadn’t felt like celebrating and nearly skipped the occasion entirely before a friend intervened. These days she weighs such calls against what her husband would have wanted — and she concluded that he would have wanted the people closest to her heart gathered around her.
The Photo Leaves Followers Reeling
Online, the wedding pictures set off a wave of comments mixing joy with sorrow at seeing the actor present for his daughter’s biggest day. One person wrote that their eyes welled up at the thought that “her dad made it”. Others admitted to crying at the sight of him at the ceremony and sent well wishes to the entire family.