What Is Aphasia, The Condition That Sidelined Bruce Willis' Career?

The family of actor Bruce Willis announced that the “Die Hard” star is “stepping away” from acting following a diagnosis of aphasia, a disorder that prevents an individual from being able to communicate.

What Happened: Rumer Willis, the actor’s daughter, posted a message on Instagram regarding her 67-year-old father’s condition.

“Bruce has been experiencing some health issues and has recently been diagnosed with aphasia, which is impacting his cognitive abilities,” she wrote. “As a result of this and with much consideration Bruce is stepping away from the career that has meant so much to him.

“This is a really challenging time for our family and we are so appreciative of your continued love, compassion and support,” Willis continued. “We are moving through this as a strong family unit, and wanted to bring his fans in because we know how much he means to you, as you do to him. As Bruce always says, ‘Live it up’ and together we plan to do just that.”

Willis’ Instagram message was signed with “Love” by Rumer and her four siblings, plus the actor’s wife Emma and his ex-wife Demi Moore.

How It Happened: According to the Mayo Clinic website, aphasia can either occur suddenly after a person suffers from a stroke or a head injury, and it can also be the result of “a slow-growing brain tumor or a disease that causes progressive, permanent damage (degenerative). The severity of aphasia depends on a number of conditions, including the cause and the extent of the brain damage.”

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association noted that a person with aphasia "often has relatively intact nonlinguistic cognitive skills, such as memory and executive function, although these and other cognitive deficits may co-occur with aphasia."

The main treatment for aphasia is speech and language therapy; there is no pharmaceutical treatment for the condition. It is unclear when Willis was diagnosed with aphasia — his last completed acting assignment to date was “Paradise City,” an independent production shot in Hawaii last spring.

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An Interrupted Career: Willis was a mostly unknown actor when he landed the star-making role on the television series “Moonlighting” in 1985. The series ran for four seasons, and Willis won an Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award for his performances.

Willis successfully transitioned into films, where his stardom was ratcheted up further with the 1988 “Die Hard.” Willis became an action film icon as “Die Hard” spawned a franchise, while the actor’s attempts to broaden his appeal in off-beat productions resulted in some memorable hits, most notably “Pulp Fiction” (1994), “12 Monkeys” (1995) and "The Sixth Sense" (1999) — as well as several notorious flop films including “The Bonfire of the Vanities” (1990), “Hudson Hawk” (1991) and “Color of Night” (1994).

More recently, Willis has focused on direct-to-video works where he is given star billing despite having a relatively limited amount of on-screen time. His work in this genre became so excessive that this year’s Razzie Awards honoring the worst of filmmaking created a category called “Worst Performance by Bruce Willis in a 2021 Movie” that incorporated eight films where he appeared.

Photo: Bruce Willis at the 2018 San Diego Comic Con. Photo by Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons