American actor Bruce Willis, 67, suffers from aphasia and is ending his career, his family announced on Wednesday March 30. Aphasia is a language disorder caused by brain injury. “Our beloved Bruce has been experiencing some health issues and has recently been diagnosed with aphasia, which is impacting his cognitive abilities. Therefore, and after careful consideration, Bruce is stepping down from this career that meant so much to him.”writes on Instagram the family of the one who played in particular in The fifth Element, pulp Fiction, diehard and Armageddon.
Here is the post from his daughter Rumer Glenn Willis, also signed by the actor’s wife, Emma Heming Willis, as well as his ex-wife Demi Moore and daughters Scout, Tallulah, Mabel and Evelyn.
According to American specialists, aphasia often occurs after a stroke or head trauma and prevents the patient from communicating normally. “It can affect your ability to speak, write and understand language, both spoken and written”, they explain. There are different forms of aphasia, more or less severe, but all of which are disabling. The family of the artist did not give details on the one from which he suffers.
Bruce Willis first distinguished himself in the 1980s with a recurring role in the series Moonlight alongside Cybill Shepherd. But it’s the action movie diehard (Crystal trap) in 1988 that made him an international star as the invincible John McClane. The shaved head and smirk had become the trademark of the actor, who reprized the role for two sequels in the 1990s (58 minutes to live and A day in hell), confirming its notoriety and becoming one of the references of the genre.
Highly sought after in Hollywood, he does a string of big productions, whether classic action films (The Last Samaritan, The Jackal) or crossbred with science fiction like The Army of the Twelve Monkeyswhich had won over critics, or The fifth Element by Luc Besson. He will also tour with directors as famous as Brian De Palma, Robert Zemeckis but especially Quentin Tarantino, who makes him play a boxer on the return in pulp Fiction in 1994, when he was at the height of his fame.
Bruce Willis will also make notable performances, for their darker and more dramatic tone, under the direction of Night Shyamalan with his fantastic thrillers Sixth Sense and Unbreakable.
Later, he continued to tour a lot but no longer found the same success and his notoriety eroded little by little, despite incursions into other genres, such as comedy (my neighbor the killer in 2000). He signs for two new parts of the saga diehard (in 2007 and 2013) which did not convince either the critics or the public.
During the previous decade, Bruce Willis had not hesitated to make fun of himself and the clichés that stuck to his skin, as in Top Cops or the second part ofExpendables.