Bruce Willis was showing signs of decline years before his aphasia diagnosis – but another illness he's had since childhood kept his wife Emma Heming Willis' concerns at bay.

Willis' family announced in 2022 that the Die Hard star would be retiring from acting after his career diagnosed with a cognitive disorder. The next year, they revealed a more specific diagnosis: frontotemporal dementia (FTD), which affects one estimated 50,000 To 60,000 Americans and is characterized by a gradual, progressive decline in behavior, language, and occupational performance.

“For Bruce, it started with language,” said Heming Willis city ​​and country in an interview published on Tuesday. But these early changes in the Emmy winner's speech didn't initially faze her, she said, as he struggled with a “severe stutter” well into his teenage years.

“Bruce always had a stutter, but he was good at covering it up. When his speech started to change, it seemed like it was just part of a stutter, it was just Bruce,” the former runway model said. “Never in a million years would I have thought it would be a form of dementia for someone so young.”

“I could hardly speak. It took me three minutes to complete a sentence,” Willis is quoted as saying “Bruce Willis: The Unauthorized Biography” published in 1997. “But when I became another character in a play, I lost my stutter. It was phenomenal.”

It was this discovery that “drove him into acting,” according to Heming Willis, which she gave to her husband in 2016 an award from the American Institute for Stuttering – told Town and Country.

Willis, who was 67 at the time of his diagnosis two years ago, is currently “stable” in his battle with the disease, his ex-wife Demi Moore said earlier this month. People with FTD can live with the disease for years, but there is no cure and sufferers are at increased risk of falls, infections and illnesses including pneumonia, which can be fatal, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Wendy Williams, the 60-year-old former talk show host who was off the air in 2022, was diagnosed with aphasia and FTD earlier this year. The Lifetime docuseries “Where's Wendy Williams?” chronicles her cognitive decline with “radical honesty,” the series' executive producer Mark Ford told The Times in February.

Heming Willis told Town and Country that she “never tried to sugarcoat Willis' condition for her two young daughters, ages 10 and 12.”

“I learned from our therapist that when children ask questions, they are ready to know the answer,” she said. Although the girls don't understand all the details, she added, they know that “daddy's not going to get better.”

With the help of Willis' eldest three children, whom the former actor shares with Moore, Heming Willis is working diligently to raise awareness of FTD. you before endorsed New York State Senator Michelle Hinchey — whose father suffered from primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia — in creating an FTD registry “so that every diagnosis in New York State is captured.”

She is also working on a book for nurses, which she first announced in February.

“It's not just about how you take care of a loved one, but also how you take care of yourself while doing it,” the FTD advocate said. “All of these experts and clinicians who helped me find my footing said, 'You can't be a caring partner to your loved one if you don't take care of yourself.' ”

Heming Willis called the untitled work “the book I wish I had had when we received the FTD diagnosis.”

“I wish I had heard from someone, 'I know this feels terrible and very traumatic, but you're going to be okay,'” she said.