“He’s not totally verbal; he used to be a voracious reader — he didn’t want anyone to know that — and he’s not reading now. All those language skills are no longer available to him, and yet he’s still Bruce.”
“When you’re with him you know that he’s Bruce and you’re grateful that he’s there,” he noted, “but the joie de vivre is gone.”
Caron and Willis worked together on the ABC series Moonlighting before the actor was diagnosed with aphasia last year, and then dementia earlier this year.
Since then, his wife, Emma Heming Willis, has given many heartbreaking updates on his diagnosis, most recently on Today.
When asked if he was aware of his condition, Heming told co-host Hoda Kotb: “It’s hard to know.”
The 45-year-old model — who has daughters Mabel, 11, and 8-year-old Evelyn with Bruce — admitted her husband’s condition has been “hard” on everyone around him, including his three adult daughters with ex-wife Demi Moore.
She grew emotional as she said: “What I’m learning is dementia is hard.
“It’s hard on the person diagnosed, it’s also hard on the family. And that is no different for Bruce, or myself, or our girls.
“When they say this is a family disease, it really is.”
Willis also has daughter Rumer, 35, with Moore — to whom he was married from 1987 to 2000 — while he and Heming have Mabel and Evelyn together.
