Bruce Willis’ Wife Emma Initially Blamed ‘Die Hard’ For His Dementia

Bruce Willis‘ wife Emma Heming Willis has revealed in her new book that she initially thought her husband’s role in the action thriller “Die Hard” was to blame when his dementia symptoms surfaced.

The former model shared that she mistook the symptoms for relationship problems until they finally got a diagnosis for his condition.

Emma Heming Willis also recently had to defend herself against trolls who slammed her for moving Bruce Willis into a separate house from their primary residence.

Emma has released her memoir “The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength, Hope, and Yourself on the Caregiving Path,” where she delves into her experience caring for her sick husband, who is currently battling frontotemporal dementia.

In the book, the former model shared that she initially thought his role as John McClane in “Die Hard” was to blame when symptoms of his cognitive decline first surfaced.

“When Bruce was shooting the first ‘Die Hard,’ he shot a gun underneath a table multiple times, and they didn’t have him wear any kind of ear protection,” she told Fox News. “That took out a huge percentage of his hearing. And over time, for all of us as we age, our hearing starts to go a bit.”

“That’s what I thought was happening,” she reflected. “Maybe we’re having this miscommunication. He is really not hearing me properly. I thought maybe that’s why we weren’t communicating as well as we used to, because of his hearing.”

In her book, Emma noted that after Bruce made the film in 1988, he “lost a large percentage of his hearing in one ear,” but it “never posed a real problem” when they first got together before their wedding in 2009.

It appears that his partial hearing inability somehow changed their relationship, as she shared that she noticed he began to “check out” during dinner with his family. She became puzzled and wondered if he was just letting his kids “yak it up,” as he would say, and have “girl talk.”

“I assumed his hearing loss made it easier for him to melt into his seat with his hands clasped gently on his lap,” she wrote, going on to describe other signs she began noticing when his condition started.

“Bruce had a severe stutter as a young child,” she told the news outlet, adding that he somehow “figured out how to work” with it, but some of the “first signs” she noticed were that “his stutter was coming back.”

In fact, Bruce’s health struggles affected their relationship so much that the former actress contemplated filing for divorce. In her book, she admitted that she struggled to understand the changes in their marriage, which caused her some form of anxiety.

“I felt like my marriage was crumbling,” Emma shared, explaining that she thought divorce might be the only way forward at the time, per Vanity Fair.

She recalled how she thought Bruce no longer loved her and had become a different person from the man she married.

“What is going on? This is not the person that I married. Something is just so off. And I just couldn’t figure it out,” she said.

Also, in an interview with Oprah Winfrey to promote the book, she disclosed that she didn’t understand the conversations they were having, as his memory seemed to be negatively impacted.

“Conversations we had, he wasn’t recalling,” she told Winfrey. “Our values just didn’t seem to be matching anymore.”

“Did you ever think about divorce?” Oprah asked, to which Emma replied that she “100 percent” thought about leaving Bruce.

“Because I just didn’t understand how our relationship… We were so connected, so enmeshed, and yet all of a sudden, things just started falling apart,” Emma shared.