Bruce Willis Collaborators Detail Star’s Cognitive Decline On Set: “Not The Bruce I Remembered”

Movie mainstay Bruce Willis, 67, shocked audiences with the announcement of his retirement from acting due to a diagnosis of aphasia, a rare brain disorder that impacts the ability to communicate. Those suffering from aphasia, which is often seen in people who have had a stroke, have trouble understanding and forming speech, struggling with word recall and more. In a post simultaneously uploaded by several of Willis’ family members Wednesday, they announced that the actor was “stepping away from the career that has meant so much to him.”

Though the news came as a surprise to the public, several collaborators told the LA Times, in heartbreaking detail, that the actor had been on the decline for years. Mike Burns, the director of Out of Death, which features Willis prominently on the poster as lead alongside Jaime King, told the Times, “I’m relieved that he is taking time off.”

Burns filmed two projects with Willis in recent years, including The Wrong Place, which is listed as being in post-production on IMDb. It was that second project that led Burns to say “I’m done. I’m not going to do any other Bruce Willis movies” due to the actor’s memory struggles, he told the Times. The severity of Willis’s condition alarmed Burns, and led him to shorten Willis’s scenes on Out of Death.

In 2020, speaking to Vulture about Out of Death, Burns noted that he only had one day to shoot with the star instead of the planned two, but pointed to COVID precautions as the culprit of the schedule change. According to the article:

“We already had such limited time with Bruce, and our time with him was cut in half,” Burns told me. “And that meant that we had to actually start cutting themes and rejiggering things.” On set, Willis looked very much at ease with the situation. Dressed in gray work pants and a white undershirt, he spent time between shots lounging in the shade with a portable electric fan.

“This was trial by fire,” Burns says. Others might call that an understatement. “There is a bullying kind of exploitative nature to some of the directors involved in the Bruce Willis movies,” says the producer who has worked with Emmett. “Days keep getting cut down to such an extreme extent that there’s no way to make a good movie, and ultimately that’s going to fall on the director and the talent involved.”

In reality, Willis’ health was a major factor in his scheduling constraints. The actor was fed his lines through a hidden earpiece while filming, the Times was told, as he was unable to retain them on his own. A stunt double was recruited for nearly all of the actor’s physical scenes — no small task, as Willis specialized in action films — and unnamed sources told the Times that Willis had shaken cast and crew members on the set of 2020’s Hard Kill when he fired a gun loaded with a blank on the wrong cue, an incident the film’s producer denied took place.

Two crew members on White Elephant, which is in post-production, told the Times that Willis was visibly confused on set. “I know why you’re here, and I know why you’re here, but why am I here?” they said he asked. The actor, who has more than a dozen credits listed since 2021, had contracts strictly limiting filming times: He would work on a project for a maximum of two eight-hour days, but crew said he would often ask to leave early.

The crew member said that Willis was “just being puppeted.”

“It was less of an annoyance and more like: ‘How do we not make Bruce look bad?’ Someone would give him a line and he didn’t understand what it meant.”

In earlier years, Willis was celebrated by the filmmaking establishment, becoming an action icon for roles in movies like Die Hard and Pulp Fiction. He earned a Golden Globe and an Emmy in the ’80s, but in recent years, drew negative recognition for his work, with the Razzies, an award that pokes fun at the worst films and performances of the year, creating an entire category exclusively for Willis this year: “Worst Performance By Bruce Willis in a 2021 Movie.” On Saturday, days before the actor revealed his health condition, they chose from the eight Willis releases they’d nominated and singled out Cosmic Sin.

Razzies co-founders John J.B. Wilson and Mo Murphy announced today that they would rescind Willis’ recent award. They released a statement:

After much thought and consideration, the Razzies have made the decision to rescind the Razzie Award given to Bruce Willis, due to his recently disclosed diagnosis.

If someone’s medical condition is a factor in their decision making and/or their performance, we acknowledge that it is not appropriate to give them a Razzie.

Terri Martin, the production supervisor on White Elephant, told the Times that it was “time for [Willis] to retire.”

“He just looked so lost, and he would say, ‘I’ll do my best,'” he said. “He always tried his best.”