“I was just a puppet”: how the film career of Bruce Willis rolled after an illness

The announcement by Bruce Willis’s family that the Hollywood action star had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia did not come as a complete surprise, especially to those who have seen the actor’s behavior on set change in recent years.

Cognitive problems in Bruce Willis began to appear during the filming of films some time ago – and even then it became obvious that the actor had serious health problems. Since he began his career in the 1970s, Willis has appeared in more than 70 films, but last year he was forced to permanently retire from acting, and he was diagnosed with aphasia – a speech problem. Now, the 67-year-old Hollywood star has been given a very disappointing diagnosis – frontotemporal dementia.

In the three years prior to leaving the cinema, Willis starred in two dozen films, writes Daily Mail, but the cast members gradually began to realize that the star actor was becoming more and more of a nuisance. According to them, Bruce increasingly misfired during filming and needed someone to prompt his lines through an earpiece as his symptoms worsened. So, according to media reports, on the set of the thriller “Open Source” (Open Source), actor Adam Huell Potter, who played a small role there, earned up to $ 4,150 a week for reading Willis his lines through an earpiece.

Over the past few years, filmmakers have been careful to keep Willis short, two days at the most, with Willis often working only four hours a day due to deteriorating health.

The movie star was often accompanied on set by an entire entourage, and his longtime assistant Stephen Eads was paid up to $200,000 per film to be with Willis everywhere.

So, while working on the film “The Siege” (American Siege, 2020), the actor was seen with an earpiece – with which words were prompted to him. And this happened a full two years before the family announced that Willis was suffering from aphasia, that is, a speech disorder.

On the set of Hard Kill (2020), directors who worked with Willis also noticed signs of potential cognitive decline. According to at least two sources, the actor made a mistake when firing a pistol loaded with a blank cartridge.

In January 2020, actress Lala Kent was supposed to play Willis’ daughter in Ordered to Destroy, and in one of the scenes, his character was supposed to intervene and protect the girl from the villains. Bruce should have said a line that would have signaled Kent to duck before he fired his weapon. But instead, Willis fired his gun before he could utter the right line, and the actress could not budge.

Lara Kent asked director Matt Eskandari to remind Willis to say his cue line before the shot, but the overlay repeated itself.

Case in point: Released in August 2020, this film features Willis for just seven minutes.

Shortly before filming began on Bruce’s Out of Death (2021), director Mike Burns sent an email to the film’s writer saying Willis’ role needed to be cut “about five pages,” Los Angeles claims times. It came just a few days before the star actor was due to appear on the set of one of his latest action films. The director gave no explanation for the sudden rewrite of the script.

According to the press, Willis was paid $2 million for two days of work on set. According to sources close to the crew, some scenes were often performed not by Willis, but by a stunt double.

Mike Burns was approached to direct Willis in another film, Wrong Place (2022), but the director was concerned about the actor’s health. Although one of Willis’ partners claimed that he was much better than last year, Burns had a very different feeling: “I thought he got worse. After we finished, I said, “I’ve had enough. I’m not going to make any other films with Bruce Willis.”

Bruce’s slowly deteriorating condition, which often left him looking confused, was also seen on the set of White Elephant (2022). The actor openly wondered what he was doing on set. Two crew members recall Bruce asking, “I know why you’re here, but why am I here?”

“Someone suggested a line to him, but he did not understand what it meant. He was just a puppet,” one crew member told the Los Angeles Times.

One of the last films in which Willis starred before retiring was Paradise City (Paradise City, 2022). Director Chuck Russell says he was thrilled to be working with Willis again on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Other eyewitnesses claim that Bruce “looked lost but said, ‘I’ll do my best.’ He is one of the greatest artists of all time and his work is one of the greatest admiration and respect, but it is time for him to retire.”

Read also: “Die Hard” Bruce Willis was given a terrible diagnosis: speech was disturbed, memory was lost”