One of Bruce Willis’ oldest Hollywood friends says the actor has no idea anything is wrong.
Kevin Pollak, who appeared alongside Willis in “The Whole Nine Yards,” its sequel “The Whole Ten Yards” and “Hostage,” talked about him with host Steve Kmetko on the “Still Here Hollywood” podcast, in comments reported Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026. Willis is surrounded by family, Pollak said, and “because of the nature of this affliction he’s not aware that there’s an issue.”
Pollak described the world around Willis as “a bubble of love and affection,” with the children Willis has with Demi Moore and with his wife, Emma Heming Willis, all close by. “In a very strange unique way, he’s as happy as he’s ever been,” Pollak said. The account is a friend’s characterization of Willis’ situation, not a medical update from his doctors.
Not Denial, but Anosognosia
In January, Emma Heming Willis said on a podcast that her husband has anosognosia, a condition in which the brain cannot recognize its own decline. “It’s not denial,” she said.
The family announced in March 2022 that Willis had been diagnosed with aphasia and would step away from acting. In February 2023, they said the more specific diagnosis was frontotemporal dementia. The aphasia ended his career and has severely limited his ability to communicate. FTD has no current treatments, and the family has said it hopes the attention on his condition pushes more awareness and research toward the disease.
A Kiss on the Forehead
Tallulah Willis, 32, the youngest of Willis and Moore’s three daughters, shared the photo on Instagram on Monday, Sept. 28, kissing her father on the forehead while gently holding his head. “So cute! 😚😚,” she captioned it.
It arrived about seven weeks after her Aug. 8 wedding to musician Justin Acee at the family’s home in Idaho, a celebration her father took part in. Wedding photos showed Tallulah resting her head on his shoulder as he wrapped an arm around her, with Acee standing beside them, holding Bruce Willis’ hand.
She has been building this record for years. In June 2025 she posted photos holding her father’s hand and embracing him during a family visit; earlier that month, she shared one of herself sitting on the floor with her arms around his legs as he sat on a couch. In a 2023 essay for Vogue, she wrote that she was documenting their time together for the day he would no longer be there to remind her of it.
Willis lives apart from his family and receives full-time care from specialists, an arrangement Emma Heming Willis has regularly defended from trolls online.
Giant Homes Across the Street
Pollak has spent time at the Idaho compound, where Willis and Moore, by then divorced, kept giant homes across the street from one another so the kids would not have far to go. On set, he said, Willis skipped the usual star entourage: his base camp was staffed by lifelong friends, among them a right-hand man who once tended bar with him in New York and holds the job to this day.
The friendship goes back to “A Few Good Men,” the 1992 courtroom drama in which Pollak played Sam Weinberg opposite Moore, then married to Willis. Willis was shooting “Death Becomes Her” on the next soundstage, and the crew learned to look for him on theirs rather than in his trailer. Watching a take of a scene between Pollak and Tom Cruise, with director Rob Reiner nearby, Willis leaned in and whispered that it was like watching Spencer Tracy. Pollak ranked it among the best notes anyone ever gave him.
In a September interview, Emma Heming Willis said her husband is still very present with the family, and that moments of connection and joy keep coming despite his dementia. On Oct. 1, during World FTD Awareness Week, she posted another photo of him and said his diagnosis continues to drive her advocacy, which she intends to aim at other families and caregivers living with the disease.
“I mean, it’s heartbreaking. So rather than crying, I’m laughing at the sort of simple sweet irony of a thriving beast of a man,” Pollak said.
