Actor Don Johnson has shared an update on Bruce Willis, the legendary actor who stepped away from the profession years ago being diagnosed with aphasia.
What was Don Johnson’s Bruce Willis health update?
Speaking to Entertainment Tonight recently, Johnson — who has been friends with Willis since the 1980s — gave a brief update on Willis, noting that he was “having a little bit of a struggle” at the moment.
“We’re best of friends and he’s having a little bit of a struggle right now and I take this moment to send him love,” Johnson said. In the interview, Johnson also recalled helping get Willis his first TV role in 1984.
“It was his first episodic TV, before Moonlighting,” Johnson said. “And I knew him from New York, and I’d hang out with him and he was funny. So I called our casting director on Miami Vice and I said, ‘You know, there’s a guy over there and I think he’s a struggling actor, and you should bring him in and read him because he’s really funny and I think he’d be good.'”
In 2022, Willis announced that he would step away from the world of acting after being diagnosed with aphasia, a language disorder that affects the ability to communicate. In a 2023 update, Willis’ daughter Rumer announced that his diagnosis had progressed into frontotemporal dementia.
In 2023, Tallulah Willis, the daughter of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, wrote an essay for Vogue detailing her family’s reaction to Willis’ diagnosis of dementia earlier this year, where she called the ongoing period for the family “the beginning of grief.” She noted that she and the rest of the family noticed that something wasn’t right with Willis “for a long time” but that it had been chalked up to Willis’ hearing damage that he suffered throughout his long career in the world of action films.
“I’ve known that something was wrong for a long time,” Tallulah wrote. “It started out with a kind of vague unresponsiveness, which the family chalked up to Hollywood hearing loss: ‘Speak up! “Die Hard” messed with Dad’s ears.’ Later that unresponsiveness broadened, and I sometimes took it personally.”
