A few days after the announcement of the dementia diagnosis of the American star, one of his last playing partners tells his memories of filming at the “Parisian”.
One of the most significant Hollywood careers of the last fifty years is coming to an end. Bruce Willis’ family announced last week that the 67-year-old actor has an incurable form of dementia. The star of Sixth Sense bows out with two films expected this year: Assassin And Detective Knight: Independence, third part of an action saga. Haitian actor Jimmy Jean-Louis, who plays Godwin Sango in the first two feature films of this trilogy, confides his memories of a complicated shoot to the Parisian.
Jimmy Jean-Louis and Bruce Willis had already crossed paths on the set of tears of the sunby Antoine Fuqua, released in 2003:
“The first day I saw Bruce again (on the set of ‘Detective Knight’), there was no problem,” says the Haitian actor daily.
“But, during the filming, I quickly realized that it was not the Bruce that I had known twenty-one years earlier. He did not have the same energy, he had memory loss, difficulty finding his feet. I was surprised, but I didn’t think it was that bad because he still managed to work.”
“We could see that he did not have all his abilities”
“We shot the day and we all dined together in the evening in a good mood”, he describes again. “However, there were difficult moments and you could see that he did not have all his abilities.”
He remembers a particularly trying scene: “I had to shake him to get a reaction because he didn’t have one! I had to go up a notch, raise my voice, say unpleasant words. J I had qualms, because it’s still Bruce Willis. It troubled me. It was difficult for me.”
And to conclude by adding that the disease did not affect “the strength in his gaze and this little smile that he could trigger at any time”: “This gaze was still so powerful and that is why he was always selling, until the last scene.”
Bruce Willis announced the end of his career last March, citing aphasia causing a disorder of his “cognitive abilities”. A more precise diagnosis, that of frontotemporal dementia, was unveiled last Friday. It is a rare neurodegenerative disease.
At 54, Jimmy Jean-Louis has an impressive CV. We saw it in the romantic comedy His mother or me! (2005) alongside Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda, or the series heroes.
