Meet Bruce Willis’ wife and caregiver Emma Heming Willis: the 45-year-old former model walked the runway for Dior, Chanel and Victoria’s Secret, acted in Entourage, and met her husband at the gym
- Since his dementia diagnosis, Bruce Willis’s wife of 14 years Emma Heming Willis has spoken out about the couple’s struggle with the disease, and continues to rally support from fans
- The couple met because they shared a personal trainer, fell in love and later starred together in the film Red 2 – and Bruce remains good friends with ex-wife Demi Moore with whom he has 3 daughters
Close to a year after his family announced that he would be stepping away from acting due to cognitive decline caused by aphasia, Bruce Willis’ wife, Emma Heming Willis, provided her husband’s fans with updates about his increasingly poor health.
In February 2023, Heming Willis announced that the actor had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia. Symptoms of the incurable condition are similar to those of Alzheimer’s – patients experience memory loss and difficulty understanding and producing language.
Heming Willis has commented on her experience becoming the caregiver of her husband of 14 years. “You know, I have my moments. It just depends. I’m hanging in there and doing the best that I can. And turning my pain into purpose,” she said in a May interview with certified dementia practitioner Gertrude Jordan.
Here’s a look inside the life of Emma Heming Willis, and her relationship with Bruce Willis.
Emma Heming Willis is half Guyanese, half English
Emma Heming, now 45, was born on the island of Malta before growing up in London and California.
On her personal website, she said she lived on the “small but beautiful” island of Malta, which lies south of Italy in the centre of the Mediterranean Sea, until her parents got divorced when she was a child. Her mother is Guyanese and her father is English, she wrote.
After her parents split up, she moved to London and then Southern California with her mother.
“My mother has been the ultimate guide in my life – she is the rock that I cherish, respect and admire,” she wrote on her website.