Cthose who recently toured with Bruce Willis affirm it: the actor tried until the end to continue to play, even if his behavior had obviously changed due to his aphasia, which causes speech disorders. At 67, Bruce Willis, whose family revealed he had just been diagnosed with aphasic, announced the end of his career. In the Sun, the stuntman who has been acting as his understudy for 17 years, admitted that he has seen his condition gradually deteriorate in recent times. “Sometimes when you were talking to him, his mind seemed to wander, we thought it was just passing, but we couldn’t help but wonder if there was something deeper,” he said. Stuart F. Wilson at the British daily.
According to him, the worrying signs have continued to multiply in recent months. “Obviously at some point we knew something else was going on. We realized it because he was doing exams for different things, but at the time, we did not know exactly what he had, ”continued the double of the actor, who still worked on his sides last December. “When you’re that close, you see the changes,” he continued. Most of the team had a feeling he was going to take a break. »
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“Everyone knew,” said a source close to the business. Page Sixthe people supplement of New York Post. According to the outlet, the actor ran into quite a bit of trouble last year while filming B-movie action movies that allowed Bruce Willis to make quick money for short appearances. “He had cognitive problems, everyone knew that, the actors and the crew. The family intervened to take care of him. “Always according to this informant, the producers systematically used earphones, so that he repeated his lines to the word, as well as linings. “Not just for action sequences, but to maximize his screen time. »
cut monologues
According to Los Angeles Times, the actor only signed filming contracts for two days, with only four hours of presence on the sets and a team specially dedicated to supporting him. Some directors, aware of the problem, cut his dialogues to a minimum, avoiding monologues. As for the scenes involving choreographed gunshots, they were all filmed with an understudy, to avoid any slippage.
I have the greatest admiration and respect for his work, but it was time for him to retire…
Even with these measures, the actor was very often disoriented, as a technician recounts in the Californian newspaper: “Someone gave him a line of dialogue and he did not understand what it meant. He was just a puppet. A feeling shared by the production coordinator of White Elephant, one of the last films of Bruce Willis: “He looked so lost, explains Terri Martin. He said, “I’m going to do my best.” And he was doing his best. I have the greatest admiration and respect for his work, but it was time for him to retire…”
When the diagnosis was announced, several directors paid tribute to his courage. Like M. Night Shyamalan, who turned it into Sixth Sense : “All my support and my respect to my big brother, he shared on Twitter. He will always be the hero of this poster hanging on my wall when I was a child. For his part, producer Randall Emmett, who has worked with the actor on some twenty films, paid tribute to his fighting spirit: “I admire him for the courage he shows in his fight against this incredibly difficult disease. … »