Action star Bruce Willis, who is stepping away from acting against cognitive difficulties, unexpectedly fired a gun loaded with a blank, the Los Angeles Times said in a report. Willis also once asked what he was doing on a film set, according to the report, which quoted nearly two dozen people who expressed concerns about his well-being.
The family of the 67-year-old star recently released a statement on Instagram in which they said he had been diagnosed with aphasia, a condition which leads to brain disorder.
But the signs started appearing at least two years ago, according to LA Times.
The publication said that Wills - who was often paid $2 million for two days of work - was fed lines through an earpiece. And most of the action scenes, especially those that involved choreographed gunfire, were filmed using a body double, the report further said.
On the sets of 'Hard Kill', the star fired a gun on wrong cue, the report further said, quoting two people familiar with the incident. They added that nobody was injured in the incident.
The film's producer disputed that the incident occurred, but the people quoted above said it left the actors and crew members shaken.
Another source was quoted by the Mail Online as saying that Willis' declining cognitive ability had been an “open secret” in Hollywood, who added that it "was increasingly difficult to have him on screen".
The LA Times spoke to Mike Burns, who directed 'Out Of Death' starring Willis in 2020. He was among a handful of people who knew Willis was struggling with his memory.
“After the first day of working with Bruce, I could see it firsthand and I realized that there was a bigger issue at stake here,” he told the Times.
He sent a mail to the film's screenwriter asking him to reduce Bruce's page count (of dialogues) by five pages. “We also need to abbreviate his dialogue a bit so that there are no monologues, etc,” he said in the email, as reported by Times.
Willis received love from his fans on social media after the announcement made by his family. Willis and ex-wife Demi Moore's daughter Scout Willis shared a few pictures of the veteran actor on her Instagram stories and she thanked her fans for all the love.
Bruce Willis started his career in the 1980s, but became famous with 1988 action movie 'Die Hard' - his first major film franchise. He also starred in '12 Monkeys', 'The Sixth Sense' and 'Unbreakable'.