Seventy-one-year-old Bruce Willis, as is well known, has been living with frontotemporal dementia since 2023, a degenerative neurological disease that has no cure. This has led his 38-year-old daughter, Rumer Willis, to undergo genetic testing to assess her own risk of developing dementia and other hereditary cognitive disorders, she recently announced.
“It’s terrifying to get answers sometimes,” she said in an interview with People. “Obviously there are genetic things in my family. Not just dementia, I’ve had some family members who have had breast cancer and family members who have had different things.”
Bruce Willis and Emma Heming Willis Built a Love and Life Together. Then, She Says, Everything Came Apart.
It’s been hard to find silver linings, or what Emma calls “cracks of light”—like the fact that she and Bruce never argue anymore. But they have built something new, and as a caregiver, she has found her voice helping others.
“But I think when you have information, it’s power,” she added. “And that sounds so, like, Spider-Man, but 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.”
Willis did not disclose the results of the tests, nor did she say if she was aware of any genetic conditions that would impact her life or the life of Louetta Isley Thomas Willis, Rumer’s three-year-old daughter with former partner Derek Richard Thomas. But, regardless of inherited conditions, the eldest daughter of Willis and then-wife Demi Moore says she’s taking steps to ensure she has a long, healthy life.
Bruce Willis and Rumer Willis at the Los Angeles premiere of Surrogates on September 24, 2009.
Jeffrey Mayer
“I think health is one of those things that we take for granted until we don’t have it,” she said. “And I think that if you are taking small steps right now to be proactive about it, you might not have to have such a steep fall off the cliff as you get older.”
Rumer Willis isn’t the first celebrity to come out publicly regarding genetic testing for cognitive decline. In 2022, Thor star Chris Hemsworth used his National Geographic docuseries Limitless to unpack test results that suggested he has a predisposition toward Alzheimer’s Disease.
Chris Hemsworth on Fear, Love, Furiosa—And Naming a Son After a Brad Pitt Character
The actor best known as Thor moved back to Australia to be close to family and far from Hollywood: “The chatter in my head got so intense.”
“It’s not a pre-deterministic gene, but it is a strong indication,” Hemsworth told Vanity Fair of the test results. “To all of a sudden be told some big indicators are actually pointing to this as the route which is going to happen, the reality of it sinks in. Your own mortality.”
