Bruce Willis showed signs of decline years before his aphasia diagnosis -- but another condition he'd had since childhood kept wife Emma Heming Willis' concerns at bay.

Willis' family in 2022 announced the "Die Hard" star would retire from acting after being diagnosed with a cognitive disorder. The next year, they revealed a more specific diagnosis: frontotemporal dementia (FTD), which affects an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 Americans and is marked by a gradual, progressive decline in behavior, language and occupational functioning.

"For Bruce, it started with language," Heming Willis told Town and Country in an interview published Tuesday. But those early changes in the Emmy winner's speech didn't initially alarm her, she said, as he struggled with a "severe stutter" well into his teenage years.

"Bruce has always had a stutter, but he has been good at covering it up. As his language started changing, it [seemed like it] was just a part of a stutter, it was just Bruce," the former runway model said. "Never in a million years would I think it would be a form of dementia for someone so young."