Hollywood Week: Emma Heming Gives Update on Bruce Willis, Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce Engaged, Venice Film Festival

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Category: Entertainment News

Published on Saturday, 30 August 2025 11:16

Written by Janet Walker

Emma Heming-Willis, wife of good guy action star Bruce Willis, has revealed in an exclusive interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer, her husband's condition has worsened, and she moved him into a home away from their family.

Bruce Willis' Condition Worsens

Bruce Willis, 70, whose Hollywood story is the quintessential actor's dream, a Manhattan bartender auditions against 3000 other actors, is discovered and becomes a television and film superstar, has been suffering from Frontotemporal dementia, (FTD) for three years.

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His wife, Emma, recently sat down with "Good Morning America's" Diane Sawyer for one of her first interviews promoting the upcoming release of her memoir, The Unexpected Journey: Finding Strength Hope and Yourself on the Caregiving Path, which provides readers with an intimate look inside her life with Willis, and the challenges she confronts daily as she watches his condition worsen.

The interview, which aired Wednesday, August 27, revealed that she had moved Willis to a one-story home, nearby, and away from the family unit, so he could receive round the clock care. She also explained she and their children spend quality time with him in this new environment. This information was met with harsh blowback, which Heming-Willis understood it would, and took to Instagram to explain the difference between those with an opinion and those with experience.

"The truth is that the opinions are so loud and they're so noisy," Emma said in a video shared to Instagram on Friday, Aug. 29. "But if they don't have the experience of this, they don't get a say, and they definitely don't get a vote," The New York Post reported.

The soundbite and perception, of course, is that she removed the beloved action star from their home, because age and illness are uncomfortable, and she simply did not want to be reminded that Willis is now mentally challenged, awkward and difficult.

And as Heming-Willis said, that is simply not the truth.

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Willis was diagnosed with Frontotemporal dementia, in 2023, after an initial diagnosis of Aphasia, in 2022, as the actor was missing cues and lines during work. With the first diagnosis, they were able to find the cause which resulted in the second diagnosis.

Experts states that FTD is not a single disease, but rather a clinical syndrome caused by progressive cell degeneration in the frontal and/or temporal regions of the brain. This degeneration can manifest in various ways, impacting a person's ability to regulate behavior, process language, or both, depending on the specific regions affected.

For Heming-Willis and their two daughters, Mabel, 13, and Evelyn, 11, this meant immediate and drastic changes.

"She began to isolate their family, because she learned that noise can cause agitation. As a result, she stopped hosting playdates and sleepovers at their home for Mabel and Evelyn. "I didn't know if parents would feel comfortable leaving their kid at our home," she explained. "I isolated our whole family, and that was by design... That was a hard time," People Magazine reported.

Willis, who was once married to actress Demi Moore and shares three daughters with her, Rumer, 37, Scout, 34, and Tallulah, 31, divorced in 2002. He married Heming in 2009. The Willis family of women have been devoted and supportive of him.

According to medical experts, there is currently no cure for FTD, which targets the frontal and temporal lobes, which control judgment, conduct, emotion, and language, except to make the individual comfortable. Treatment is focused on managing symptoms and improving quality of life for both the person affected and their caregivers.

Heming-Willis explains "Bruce is in great health; it is only his brain that is failing him." It's like a pristine-mint-condition automobile with a bad engine that cannot be replaced. The car looks good, but it doesn't work.

An Unexpected Journey, by Emma Heming-Willis, will arrive in bookstores September 9, 2025 and is available for pre-order.

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Taylor Swift Engaged

Songstress Taylor Swift and NFL player Travis Kelce are engaged.

"Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married," Swift captioned an Instagram carousel that featured five photos of the pair in a bucolic garden setting, including one of Kelce kneeling and another featuring an enormous diamond ring on her left hand. Kelce shared the post on his account," The Washington Post reported.

The couple, both 35, have been dating since 2023. Swift, whose ERAS tour, one of the most successful in music history, ended recently, and Kelce, who is part of the Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs team.

The announcement kicked off a media frenzy and nearly broke the internet. Swift, who has been known to open her diary and use romantic breakups to pen lyrics to many of her chart topping songs, has said in interviews Kelce's attempt to get her attention was a shout-out on his weekly podcast, as he was unable to gain backstage access to her ERAS tour stop in KC to give her a friendship bracelet with his phone number.

Not one to be bowled over by the "metal as hell" gesture, if wasn't until others interceded on his behalf including KC Coach Andy Reid, and explained that Kelce was a "nice guy," that Swift decided to give romance another try.

A wedding date has not been set.

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Venice Film Festival Kicks off Awards Season

The 82nd Venice International Film Festival, which officially kicks off the annual awards season, opened this week and will close on September 6, 2025. Many of the expected award contenders, including Searchlight's Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, NEON's No Other Choice, Frankenstein from Netflix, and After the Hunt from Amazon/MGM have premiered.

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, from Searchlight Pictures, the Bruce Springsteen bio-pic, directed by Scott Cooper, which has garnered lukewarm reviews, but strong award mentions for its star Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong, is not the "Born in the USA" Bruce, a man past the climb and reaching a pinnacle.  Deliver Me From Nowhere, focus on the aftermath of making of the 1982 album "Nebraska."

"By focusing on "Nebraska" — a gallery of desperate, despairing characters, rendered in starkly acoustic form — and the depressive breakdown that Springsteen experienced in the aftermath of its creation, the film instead tells a story about the fragility of mental health and the limits of art alone to sustain it," The New York Times reported.

No Other Choice, from NEON and Korean Director Park Chan-Wook, has been called this year's Parasite the 2019 Academy Award winning film. No Other Choice, starring "Squid Games" star, Lee Byung-hun, [the man behind the black mask] according to the BBC.com, is "another deliriously entertaining and continually surprising South Korean film which rails against today's economic realities, and which boasts an imaginatively staged death or two."

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Frankenstein, from director Guillermo Del Toro, and Netflix, who has yet to win a Best Picture Oscar, has built a mesmerizing take on the classic with an imaginative, creative, and thrilling remake, starring Oscar Isaacs, and Christoph Waltz, received a 14-minute standing ovation after its screening, three minutes from the longest standing ovation record in festival history. 

Frankenstein is up for the big awards at Venice, where it will be competing with films like Yorgos Lanthimos's "Bugonia,"Kathryn Bigelow's "A House of Dynamite," Park Chan-wook's "No Other Choice" and Kaouther Ben Hania's "The Voice of Hind Rajab." Winners will be announced by the Alexander Payne-led jury on Sept. 6," according to AP.com.

After the Hunt, from Amazon/MGM, and starring Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri, and Michael Stuhlbarg, and directed by Luca Guadagnino, received a six-minute standing ovation after the filmed screened. The premise, in the #MeToo film, deals with sexual assault on campus, and in this case pits the highbrow intellectuals, who have suffered in silence through the same ordeal, against those women of a different generation who refused to suffer in silence, and nearly alienating their elders who, intellectual or not still, operate on a good girls, especially if you want to keep your career, absorb it and move on, mentality.

According to Deadline, "It won't be a watercooler movie in that respect, and it may be a shock to unwary audiences lured in by Roberts's star wattage. But it could mark another milestone for the actress, being her strongest role since 2000's Erin Brockovich and an astonishing performance in its very own right. 

After the Hunt, is definitely a conversation piece. The question is will conversation be enough to propel the Oscar winner to the podium for a second time.

Janet Walker is the publisher, founder, and sole owner of Haute-Lifestyle.com. A graduate of New York University, she has been covering international news through the Beltway Insider, a weekly review of the nation's top stories, for more than a decade.  A general beat writer/reporter and entertainment/film critic, she is also an accomplished news/investigative news/crime reporter and submitted for Pulitzer Prize consideration "Cops Conspire to Deep Six Sex Assaults" in the Breaking News Category and was persuaded to withdraw the submission. Ms. Walker has completed five screenplays "The Six Sides of Truth," "The Assassins of Fifth Avenue," "The Wednesday Killer," "The Manhattan Project," and the sci-fi thriller "Project 13: The Last Day." She has also published "Unholy Alliances: A True Crime Story," and "Days, Times, Seasons, and Events: A Collection of Poetry & Prose," which can be purchased here. She is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, the National Writers Union, and a member of the International Federation of Journalists.