The small moments still come, and Rumer Willis says she is holding on to every one of them. Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is what her 71-year-old father lives with, and the 38-year-old actress, whose parents are “Die Hard” star Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, described his daily routine now in a new People interview, then returned to the subject in an Instagram video shared Monday, August 24, 2026.
Her focus is not on what the disease has taken. Her father appears content and is faring about as well as anyone could hope under the circumstances, she said — something she picks up on during visits with her three-year-old daughter, Louetta.
“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.” What steadies the family, she said, is gratitude. “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.” There is no map for any of it, she added, because the condition presents differently in every patient.
Finding Strength on the Hard Days
The harder side of it gets just as much airtime from her. “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. What she tries to do instead is “prioritize being present with where he is at now,” and she described the balancing act this way: “The truth is, to be strong is learning to deal with both things at the same time.”
A Diagnosis That Came in Stages
It was Rumer Willis who told the world first. An Instagram post in March 2022 was where she made her father’s aphasia diagnosis public — the condition impairs a person’s ability to communicate — and that same post announced that he was stepping back from the career that had meant so much to him.
A more specific name for what the family was facing arrived in February 2023, when the actor’s frontotemporal dementia was announced. Language and behavior are what the disease targets. Among the symptoms listed by Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) are memory trouble, slowed speech, personality shifts and declining mental abilities.
For decades, Bruce Willis was one of Hollywood’s most recognizable leading men, with “Die Hard,” “The Sixth Sense,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Armageddon,” “The Fifth Element” and “12 Monkeys” among his credits. Demi Moore, married to him from 1987 to 2000, starred in “Ghost,” “A Few Good Men” and “Indecent Proposal.” Rumer, Scout and Tallulah are their children.
There has been happier news among them this month. Tallulah Willis, daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, married musician Justin Acee on August 8, 2026 in an intimate ceremony in Sun Valley, Idaho. Demi Moore posted dress-fitting photos, writing in part, “So grateful we were able to share this precious event together as a family.”
Rumer Willis, meanwhile, has moved to Nashville, Tennessee, having relocated from Los Angeles to Idaho in early 2025. She announced the move on Instagram, writing: “Moving your whole life across the country is a leap of faith. So is handing it to strangers.” She was temporarily awarded primary physical custody of Louetta in June 2026 following her split from Derek Richard Thomas, and a source familiar with the family told Radaronline.com: “Rumer has been through an incredibly emotional period and Nashville represents an opportunity to reset.”
Why She Took a Genetic Test
Watching FTD up close is what pushed the “The House Bunny” star into taking charge of her own well-being. Function, a health membership offering more than 160 advanced lab tests along with imaging and specialized assessments, is the partner she signed on with, and through it she took the APOE genetic test, which measures her risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Her results, she said in the August 24, 2026 video, which was posted to Function’s Instagram page, came back “pretty average.” She added: “It just means there is some risk, but it’s not crazy. Companies like Function empower you to put the information in your hands.” Breast cancer also runs in her family, she said, and she told People, “It’s terrifying to get answers sometimes.”
The reason, she said, is Louetta: she wants to stick around for her daughter as long as she can. Staying as healthy as she can for as long as she can is no longer optional, she said. Anyone hoping to invest in health and longevity, in her description, would find the membership a good starting point. Tracking her own data, she said, is what makes that possible: “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.”
Emma Heming Willis on His Health
Others in the family have spoken publicly, too. An entrepreneur and author who previously worked as a model, Emma Heming Willis has spent 17 years married to the actor, shares two children with him and has talked at length about caring for her husband. She said she was thankful that he remains very much present during an ABC News special with journalist Diane Sawyer in August 2025.
“Bruce is still very mobile, Bruce is in really great health overall, it’s just his brain that is failing him,” she said.
A report published August 28, 2026 says the family has reportedly begun making plans that may include donating the actor’s brain to science for research into neurodegenerative disease because of his frontotemporal dementia. According to that report, no official statement from the family has confirmed it.
His eldest daughter arrives at much the same place in her own words. A dementia diagnosis brings questions nobody can answer and a timeline nobody can predict, and one simple fact is where Rumer Willis keeps landing: her father is still here. He still smiles when he sees her and Louetta, and the time they have is time the family is making the most of.
