Bruce Willis’ Cognitive Decline Suspected for Several Years

On Wednesday, Bruce Willis’ family announced that he was retiring from acting, due to aphasia.

In a statement, his family said, “To Bruce’s amazing supporters, as a family we wanted to share that our beloved Bruce has been experiencing some health issues and has recently been diagnosed with aphasia, which is impacting his cognitive abilities.”

It has been reported that Willis had been suffering cognitive issues on set for years.

A source told Page Six that Willis was suffering "cognitive issues" on the set of his recent movies. They said, "Everybody knew, the cast and crew. His family has stepped in, they moved in to take care of him.”

Willis was reportedly unable to remember his lines and used "earpieces, hearing things, for [production] to feed him the lines."

The insider claimed that body doubles were even hired, saying, "It became very apparent that he was having problems. So they’d use body doubles, not just for action [sequences], but for maximizing his screen time.”

The Los Angeles Times reports “Out of Death” director Mike Burns asked the movie’s screenwriter to “knock down Bruce’s page count by about 5 pages” in an email from June 2020.

At the time, Burns didn’t explain why Bruce’s lines needed to be “short and sweet.”

Burns is now sharing his account of working with Willis to The Times, saying, “After the first day of working with Bruce, I could see it firsthand and I realized that there was a bigger issue at stake here and why I had been asked to shorten his lines.”

Along with directing the movie, Burns said he had reduce all of Willis’ scenes into one day of shooting, which proved to be extremely challenging.

Despite his experience on “Out of Death,” Burns worked with Willis again on “Wrong Place.” Before starting production on the film, one of Bruce’s associates told Burns that he was “way better than last year” and Burns took their word for it.

When filming began, Burns felt that things hadn’t gotten better for Willis. He said, “I thought he was worse. After we finished, I said: ‘I’m done. I’m not going to do any other Bruce Willis movies.’ I am relieved that he is taking time off.”

Jesse V. Johnson, who worked with Willis on “White Elephant” in 2021, also shared his account.

Before they started shooting, Jesse met Bruce briefly, realizing that “he was not the Bruce I remembered.” Johnson worked with Willis in the past as a stuntman.

Jesse recalled a conversation he had with one of Bruce’s handlers, saying, “They stated that he was happy to be there, but that it would be best if we could finish shooting him by lunch and let him go early.”

According to crew members on the set of the movie, Bruce was confused about where he was, allegedly asking, “I know why you’re here, and I know why you’re here, but why am I here?”

One crew member commented, “It was less of an annoyance and more like: ‘How do we not make Bruce look bad?’ Someone would give him a line and he didn’t understand what it meant. He was just being puppeted.”

Johnson was also offered a chance to work with Willis again, but he declined like Burns. He said, “After our experience on ‘White Elephant,’ it was decided as a team that we would not do another. We are all Bruce Willis fans, and the arrangement felt wrong and ultimately a rather sad end to an incredible career, one that none of us felt comfortable with.”

Terri Martin, who worked as the production supervisor on “White Elephant,” added, “He just looked so lost, and he would say, ‘I’ll do my best.’ He always tried his best. He is one of the all-time greats, and I have the utmost admiration and respect for his body of work, but it was time for him to retire.”