Bruce Willis 'misfired guns on Hard Kill movie set in 2020 and asked crew what he was doing during the production of the film White Elephant in 2021': Directors were forced to reduce his roles due to 'heartbreaking' battle with aphasia

By Adam Manno for DailyMail.com

Bruce Willis has shown signs of cognitive decline for years, twice firing a gun loaded with blanks on the wrong cue and wondering aloud what he was doing on a set, according to people who have worked with him.

Willis, 67, is retiring from acting after he was diagnosed with aphasia, a brain condition that affects his ability to understand language, his family said in an Instagram post Wednesday.

Lala Kent, the star of Vanderpump Rules who played Willis' daughter in Hard Kill, recalls that the action hero unexpectedly fired a gun on the wrong cue twice during filming in 2020.

'I'm supposed to think my life is about to end, and then my dad steps in to save the day,' she told the Los Angeles Times, explaining that she had her back to him during the scene and was supposed to duck after he delivered his line but before he fired the gun.

No one was injured in the incident, and the film's producer and armorer say it didn't happen.

Last April, Willis also openly questioned what he was doing on the set of the upcoming low-budget film White Elephant.

'I know why you're here, and I know why you’re here, but why am I here?' two crew members recall him asking.

Willis has been in more than 70 movies since he got his start in the 1970s. His instantly recognizable face helps sell low-budget films in international markets. In recent years, he's mostly worked with the production companies Emmett/Furla Oasis and 308 Entertainment, according to the LA Times.

Kent says she took things in her stride after Willis' first misfire on the set of Hard Kill in 2020.

'Because my back was to him, I wasn't aware of what was happening behind me. But the first time, it was like, "No big deal, let's reset,'" she recalled.

She asked director Matt Eskandari to remind Willis to say his line before firing, but it happened again.

Two other crew members confirmed that Willis fired the gun on the wrong cue, with one adding, 'We always made sure no one was in the line of fire when he was handling guns.'

Randall Emmett, who founded Emmett/Furla Oasis and has worked with Willis on 20 films, says Willis didn't fire a gun prematurely. The movie's armorer also denies that the incident happened.

Director Jesse V. Johnson met Willis briefly before the shooting of White Elephant began in Georgia last April, but he says, 'it was clear that he was not the Bruce I remembered.'

He says he asked the Emmy winner's team about his condition.

'They stated that he was happy to be there, but that it would be best if we could finish shooting him by lunch and let him go early,' he recalled.

The crew rushed to film his parts, and the actor was later heard asking what he was doing on set.

'It was less of an annoyance and more like: "How do we not make Bruce look bad?" one crew member told the LA Times. 'Someone would give him a line and he didn’t understand what it meant. He was just being puppeted.'

In 2020, the director of Out of Death told the movie's screenwriter to keep his lines 'short and sweet,' offering little explanation for the sudden re-write.

'It looks like we need to knock down Bruce's page count by about 5 pages,' director Mike Burns said in a June 2020 email to the screenwriter. 'We also need to abbreviate his dialogue a bit so that there are no monologues, etc.'

An unnamed source told Page Six his declining cognitive ability had been an open secret in Hollywood as the actor repeatedly had trouble acting in his films.

'Everybody knew, the cast and crew,' the unnamed source said, adding that Willis was 'using earpieces, hearing things, for them to feed him the lines,' and it 'was increasingly difficult to have him on screen.'

He said that films actually had to be made closer to where Willis resided with his family - who, the source said, has been taking care of the 67-year-old actor - to make productions easier.

And in at least one production, the source said, producers began using a body double to increase Willis' screen time, while in another his screen time was 'whittled down,' with the actor shooting on set for only three days.

The source said: 'It was becoming super obvious he was having trouble... he could not act anymore.'

The famed actor can even be seen in a scene in his new movie American Siege, which was filmed in 2020, wearing an earpiece. This was a full two years before the family's announcement that Willis has aphasia.

Willis had previously been seen using an earpiece to feed him lines in his Broadway debut in Misery in 2015, an an unnamed insider also told OK! Magazine

He was also reportedly struggling during the filming of M. Night Shyamalan's 2019 film Glass.

While filming Glass, staffers worked around him by cutting and editing and having him overdub lines because he struggled to remember and/or deliver them,' they told the publication, according to the New Zealand Herald.

'In most scenes on Glass he's hooded, and they used stand-in and body doubles to replace him. On set, he wouldn't smile and was always chaperoned by an assistant to guide him while walking.'

The source also said at the time that Willis had sold his New York property to spend more time with his wife and children in Los Angeles, and said that his wife, as well as ex-wife Demi Moore, were working together to take care of the famed actor.

'His wife Emma has helped Demi Moore and the children Bruce shares with his ex-wife to make truces because they know he's fading,' the unnamed source told the magazine in January 2021.

'Between Demi and Emma, the family has always ensured Bruce has the support and care he might need at any given time,' the insider said.

They added, 'The good news is that although there is the real concern of dementia fears, it largely has not impacted his ability to work in Hollywood – and in true super hero form – he won't slow down because new technology like earpieces allows actors of his caliber not to skip a beat.'

But in recent years, the New Zealand Herald reports, die hard fans of the actor have noticed he was taking more roles in straight-to-video releases.

This year, Page Six reports, Willis was given his own category at the Razzies - a parody award show honoring the worst of cinematic under-achievements - for the 'worst movies of 2021' after he starred in eight critically-panned films.

One of his films, Out of Death, earned a zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

The parody awards show apologized to the actor following the announcement of his diagnosis on Wednesday, tweeting: 'The Razzies are truly sorry for #BruceWillis' diagnosed condition.

'Perhaps this explains why he wanted to go out with a bang in 2021. Our best wishes to Bruce and family.'

[www.dailymail.co.uk]

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