After Bruce Willis, through a joint statement, announced he was retiring from acting due to an aphasia diagnosis, a new report claims that crew members on the latest Willis production sets saw how the diseases diminish his ability to memorize lines and even to remember why he was there.
A report from Los Angeles Times gathers testimonies from different directors and crew members that detailed how in the last few years, Willis struggled to remember dialogues, expressed confusion, and did not remember why he was on set.
Mike Burns, director of the 2021 thriller “Out of Death” in which Willis plays a retired cop, remembers how he realized why he was asked to shorten Bruce’s lines and compress 25 pages of dialogue to a single day of filming.
The Angelino publication also details how crew members of the upcoming thriller “White Elephant” recall the moment the actor seemed lost and did not know where or why he was on the set.
“He just looked so lost, and he would say, ‘I’ll do my best.’ He always tried his best. He is one of the all-time greats, and I have the utmost admiration and respect for his body of work, but it was time for him to retire.”, said film production supervisor Terri Martin to Los Angeles Times.
Another detail that has surfaced after Willis’ retirement is that his management asked for shootings to be limited to just two days and 8 hours of work, although production sources claim that he worked closer to four.
Moreover, because of Willis’ diminished ability to memorize and remember his lines, most of them were delivered through an earpiece.
Aphasia, the disease with which Willis was diagnosed, diminishes progressively the ability to communicate or understand words or sentences and it can be caused by many reasons, amongst them a stroke or a head injury.
