"I've known that something was wrong for a long time"

In recent months, there has been sad news on the progression of actor Bruce Willis's battle with dementia.

The 'Die Hard' star's family initially announced last year that he was 'stepping away' from his acting career due to a diagnosis of aphasia. Earlier this year, they revealed how his condition had deteriorated and he was now dealing with frontotemporal dementia.

Now, Tallulah - one of three daughters he shares with ex-wife Demi Moore - has opened up about her father's illness, penning an emotional essay for Vogue, which also discussed the online trolling she received for how she looked from the age of 11, and the impact that it had on her.

The 29-year-old admitted that she avoided dealing with her father's illness for some time.

"But I’ve known that something was wrong for a long time," she said. "It started out with a kind of vague unresponsiveness, which the family chalked up to Hollywood hearing loss: “Speak up! Die Hard messed with Dad’s ears.” Later that unresponsiveness broadened, and I sometimes took it personally. He had had two babies with my stepmother, Emma Heming Willis, and I thought he’d lost interest in me. Though this couldn’t have been further from the truth, my adolescent brain tortured itself with some faulty math: I’m not beautiful enough for my mother, I’m not interesting enough for my father."

She added how she had reacted to Bruce's decline "with a share of avoidance and denial that I’m not proud of", but revealed that she had been herself battling personal issues in recent years, including anorexia, depression and ADHD - explaining how the medication she had taken for the latter had caused her to lose weight, which in turn led to body dysmorphia while "dad was quietly struggling."

A moment of painful clarity came, she said, when she attended a friend's wedding in 2021 "and the bride’s father made a moving speech. Suddenly I realized that I would never get that moment, my dad speaking about me in adulthood at my wedding," she wrote. "It was devastating. I left the dinner table, stepped outside, and wept in the bushes."

She added: "I keep flipping between the present and the past when I talk about Bruce: he is, he was, he is, he was. That’s because I have hopes for my father that I’m so reluctant to let go of."

You can read the full essay here.