Kevin Pollak, one of Willis’ oldest Hollywood friends, described the actor’s life on the “Still Here Hollywood” podcast with host Steve Kmetko, in comments reported Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026.
Pollak said Willis is surrounded by family and “because of the nature of this affliction he’s not aware that there’s an issue.” His account is a friend’s characterization of Willis’ situation, not a medical update from his doctors.
“In a very strange unique way, he’s as happy as he’s ever been,” Pollak said. He called the world around Willis “a bubble of love and affection,” with the children Willis has with Demi Moore, his former wife, and with his wife, Emma Heming Willis, close by.
“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. The two have shared three films: “The Whole Nine Yards,” its sequel “The Whole Ten Yards” and “Hostage.”
Pollak met Willis on “A Few Good Men,” the 1992 courtroom drama, where he 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.
Willis leaned in during a take of a scene between Pollak and his co-star Tom Cruise, with director Rob Reiner nearby, and whispered that it was like watching Spencer Tracy. Pollak ranks it among the best notes anyone ever gave him.
Why He Cannot See It
Emma Heming Willis said in January, 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 was stepping away from acting, and in February 2023 it gave a more specific diagnosis, frontotemporal dementia. The aphasia ended his career and severely limited his ability to communicate; FTD has no current treatments. The family has said it hopes the attention on his condition pushes more awareness and research toward the disease.
A Forehead Kiss on Instagram
Tallulah Willis, 32, the youngest of Willis and Moore’s three daughters, posted a photograph on Instagram on Monday, Sept. 28, kissing her father on the forehead and gently holding his head. “So cute! 😚😚,” she captioned it.
The picture came 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 with his arm around her, and Acee beside them, holding Bruce Willis’ hand.
She has shared such moments before. In June 2025 she posted photos holding her father’s hand and embracing him during a family visit, and earlier that month a photo of herself on the floor, arms around his legs as he sat on a couch. Her 2023 Vogue essay documented their time together for the day he would no longer be there to remind her of it.
Living Apart, Still Very Present
Willis lives apart from his family and receives full-time care from specialists, an arrangement Emma Heming Willis regularly defends from trolls online.
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, Pollak said, Willis skipped the usual star entourage and staffed his base camp with lifelong friends, among them a right-hand man who once tended bar with him in New York and holds the job to this day.
Emma Heming Willis said in a September interview that her husband is still very present with the family and that moments of connection and joy keep coming despite his dementia. She posted another photo of him on Oct. 1, during World FTD Awareness Week, and has said his diagnosis continues to drive her advocacy, intended for other families and caregivers living with the disease.
“Your Voice Is Too High”
Ben Affleck, who worked with Willis on the 1998 movie “Armageddon,” recalled on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast the advice he got from the older actor during filming, in comments reported Oct. 18.
“Bruce Willis once turned to me and was like, ‘Your voice is too high,’” Affleck said. When he protested that it was just his voice, Willis came back: “You don’t wanna sound like that, man! I’m helping you out!” Affleck called him “the sweetest guy in the world,” adding, “I love Bruce, and he really was giving me a tip.”
Willis also warned him off “Shakespeare in Love.” “He was like, ‘Man, don’t go do that Shakespeare movie, man. You don’t wanna do that movie.’” Affleck said. He took the role anyway, and his verdict on the advice was blunt: “[He] was wrong about that one.” Willis, he added, “hadn’t read the script, in all fairness.”
Affleck used the same interview to take on the current state of Hollywood and the reaction to Cruise’s movie “Digger.” “It’s a little bit like the high-school bullying thing, with people who hadn’t even seen movies. You see it happening now, frankly, with Digger …,” he said, warning that “if you punish movies that take risks, guess what you’re going to get? A bunch of s***** homogenized movies.”
