| MATTHEW LYNCH,
EXECUTIVE EDITOR |
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Your mileage may vary, but for my money Bruce Willis was the smartest and slyest of the ’80s action-star crop, the guy who was in on the joke—and always made the movie that much better for it. That command is surely part of what has made his diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia, and his subsequent retreat from public life, feel particularly tragic for fans. Frequent VF contributor Anna Peele today profiles Willis’s wife, Emma Heming Willis, who will soon release a book about Willis’s diagnosis and her role as caregiver. It’s a compelling portrait of lives upended, though not without “cracks of light,” as Emma calls their silver linings.
Elsewhere today, we look at the uncertainty surrounding Meghan Markle’s TV pivot; preview Sydney Sweeney’s ring entrance; and break down Donald Trump’s continued circling of the Federal Reserve. More Monday… |
When Emma Heming married Bruce Willis in a family-and-friends-only ceremony at Parrot Cay, he was in his prime as one of the world’s most famous movie stars, an alpha male with a wink to beat them all. Emma, so prone to catastrophizing, knew she had found her soulmate—the guy who could save the world, as one friend puts it. But even in her worst imaginings, she tells VF’s Anna Peele all these years later, she could never have pictured their fate. By the time she understood what exactly was happening to Bruce, his disease had progressed to the point that he would never know what had happened to him.
Willis’s frontotemporal dementia has changed the couple’s lives—and the lives of everyone in their family, including Demi Moore and Willis’s children with her. Now Emma tells VF how it all happened, and how she is helping other caregivers and families through the experience of the longest goodbye. |
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Ahead of the premiere of Christy at the Toronto International Film Festival—the actor’s first major public appearance since the controversy surrounding her American Eagle campaign—she tells VF, “I am there to support my movie and the people involved in making it, and I’m not there to talk about jeans.” |
The Justice Department has reportedly opened a criminal investigation into Lisa Cook, the Federal Reserve governor the president is trying to fire. |
After Hawaii, Italy, and Thailand, rumor has it that the HBO hit will head to a Mediterranean getaway that has welcomed wealthy guests and celebrities for decades. |
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In June 2007, it had been almost two decades since Die Hard blasted into the action-movie stratosphere, kicking off a billion-dollar-plus franchise and launching Bruce Willis into big-screen orbit.
Ahead of Willis’s fourth time playing John McClane in Live Free or Die Hard, VF’s Peter Biskind found him more of a maverick than ever, sounding off about his trip to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the Kennedy assassination, and other stuff Hollywood doesn’t want to hear: “Have you heard anything useful come out of an actor’s mouth lately?” |
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