Bruce Willis gave Laurie Metcalf and her eldest son a generous gift.
The 70-year-old actress and Will’s meal at Nobu was paid for by the Die Hard legend after Bruce recommended the Japanese-Peruvian fusion restaurant Laurie when the pair starred in the Broadway show, Misery, adapted from Stephen King’s book.
Recalling the Good Deed
She declared the retired actor “one of the most generous people I’ve ever met.” She shared the news on the latest episode of Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast.
Laurie then recalled how she kept Bruce company as he underwent “hours” of leg makeup and prosthetics for his character, an injured romance novelist.
She said, “I’d sit on the bed with him and we would talk over our day, and kids, and I was saying, ‘Well, my oldest son’s coming to town. Where should we go?’ And he goes, ‘Oh, you got to take him to Nobu, especially if you like sushi.'”
“And so the next day I said, ‘Bruce,’ at the top of the show, ‘I’m taking Will to Nobu. We’re very excited.’ He said, ‘Oh, great. I hope you like it.'”
“And then the next day, maybe after the second show, Will and I went, ordered a ton of stuff, were seated in an extremely nice booth there, as I remember, and of course went to pay, and afterwards, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, this has been taken care of by Mr Willis.'”
Laurie has Will, 32, Donovan and Mae, 20, with her 61-year-old ex-husband, actor Matt Roth, and actress Zoe Perry, 42, with her 70-year-old former spouse, actor Jeff Perry.
Willis and Dementia Diagnosis
Meanwhile, Bruce and his 63-year-old ex-wife, actress Demi Moore’s daughter, Rumer Willis, said her dad has turned from a “macho” man to a gentler person since his aphasia diagnosis in March 2022. The diagnosis turned into frontotemporal dementia (FTD) in 2023.
FTD is a term for a group of brain diseases that affect the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. It causes significant changes in personality, behavior, and language, rather than memory loss.
Rumer, 37, said on a recent episode of Maeve Reilly’s The Inside Edit podcast, “I’m so grateful I get to go see him. Even though it’s different now, I’m so grateful.”
“There’s a sweetness. He’s always been this kind of macho dude, and there’s like a – fragile is not the right word, but – just a tenderness that maybe being Bruce Willis might not have allowed him in a certain way.”
FTD is one of the rarest forms of the neurological disease. The Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood actress noted that she did not realize how “prevalent” it was.
Willis’ Children
Rumer said, “It’s wild to me. So many people come up to me now, and they say, ‘My uncle had FTD. My dad had this.'”
Bruce and Demi are also parents to Scout, 34, and 32-year-old Tallulah.
The Armageddon actor has Mabel, 14, and Evelyn, 12, with his 47-year-old wife, model Emma Heming Willis.