Rumer Willis is confronting her own genetic future head-on, choosing to find out what her family’s medical history might mean for her rather than wait and wonder, as her father, Bruce Willis, continues living with frontotemporal dementia (FTD).
“It’s terrifying to get answers sometimes,” Rumer told PEOPLE, discussing her decision to undergo advanced genetic testing through the health membership Function. She’s specifically screening for her risk of Alzheimer’s disease, a choice shaped by watching her father’s decline.
“But I think when you have information, it’s power,” she said, framing the fear as worth pushing through anyway. Rumer, 38, isn’t only weighing dementia risk, either. Her family’s medical history runs wider than that.
“Obviously there are genetic things in my family. Not just dementia, I’ve had some family members who have had breast cancer,” she told the outlet, explaining why she wanted a fuller picture instead of waiting for symptoms to show up on their own.
Bruce was diagnosed with aphasia in 2022, a disorder that affects language and communication, before his family announced in 2023 that the condition had progressed to FTD. He turned 71 in March and has largely stepped back from public life since, though his family continues sharing candid updates on his condition, something Movieguide® has followed closely since the diagnosis changed.
FTD is a less common but especially cruel form of dementia. Unlike Alzheimer’s, it tends to strike people in their 40s, 50s and 60s, attacking personality and behavior before memory loss ever sets in. That earlier onset is part of why Rumer wants answers now rather than later, while she still has time to plan around whatever she learns.
Bruce’s wife, Emma Heming Willis, has led much of that effort publicly, launching the Emma & Bruce Willis Fund to confront FTD “by raising awareness, funding promising research, and supporting caregivers.” Rumer has done her own part too, recently sharing quieter moments between her father and his newest granddaughter, Louetta.
Bruce shares daughters Rumer, Scout and Tallulah with ex-wife Demi Moore, and daughters Evelyn and Mabel with Heming Willis. Across two households, the Willis family has stayed remarkably unified in how they’ve handled the diagnosis in public, favoring honesty over privacy even when the truth is painful.
That same instinct is what pushed Rumer toward genetic testing in the first place. She would rather know than wonder, and she’s not shy about saying so, even when the answers might be hard to hear.
There’s something worth sitting with in that choice. Scripture doesn’t promise anyone immunity from disease or a difficult family history, but it does call believers to stewardship of the body and of the time they’ve been given. Rumer’s decision to seek clarity instead of avoiding it echoes that same instinct: information isn’t just power, it’s a form of care for the people who love her, and for whatever years she has left to be fully present for them.
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