CINEMA: Bruce Willis decides to retire from acting after being diagnosed with aphasia.

Bruce Willis has been diag­nosed with apha­sia and is retir­ing imme­di­ate­ly, his fam­i­ly has confirmed.

In a state­ment post­ed on Rumer Willis’ Insta­gram account, the fam­i­ly said, “To Bruce’s incred­i­ble fans, as a fam­i­ly, we want­ed to share that our beloved Bruce has been deal­ing with health issues and was recent­ly diag­nosed with apha­sia, which is impact­ing his cog­ni­tive abilities.

“As a result and with great con­sid­er­a­tion, Bruce is step­ping away from the career that has meant so much to him.

“This is a tru­ly dif­fi­cult time for our fam­i­ly and we great­ly appre­ci­ate your con­tin­ued love, com­pas­sion and support.

“We’re going through this as a strong fam­i­ly unit and we want­ed to bring his fans along because we know how much he means to you, as you do to him.

“As Bruce always says, ‘Live it up’ and togeth­er we plan to do just that.”

Willis has appeared in clas­sic films such as the Die Hard series and Pulp Fic­tion since his career began in 1980.

He has also appeared in tele­vi­sion shows such as Mia­mi Vice and Moon­light­ing, while also pur­su­ing a music career.

Willis achieved super­star sta­tus for his role as John McClane in Die Hard, but has also appeared in such huge films as The Fifth Ele­ment, The Sixth Sense and Sin City.

He is known for his tough guy cre­den­tials, but also won a Gold­en Globe for his role as pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor David Addi­son in Moonlighting.

Apha­sia is a con­di­tion that affects cog­ni­tive func­tions such as the abil­i­ty to speak, write and under­stand language.

The NHS web­site describes the con­di­tion as “when a per­son has dif­fi­cul­ty with lan­guage or speech” and says it is “usu­al­ly caused by dam­age to the left side of the brain.”

Peo­ple with apha­sia may have dif­fi­cul­ty read­ing, lis­ten­ing, writ­ing and speaking.

How­ev­er, accord­ing to the web­site, “Speech prob­lems are per­haps the most obvi­ous, and peo­ple with apha­sia may make mis­takes in the words they use.

“This can some­times be using the wrong sounds in a word, choos­ing the wrong word or putting words togeth­er incorrectly.

“Although apha­sia affects a per­son­’s abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate, it does not affect their intelligence.

“Apha­sia can occur alone or along with oth­er dis­or­ders, such as visu­al dif­fi­cul­ties, mobil­i­ty prob­lems, limb weak­ness and prob­lems with mem­o­ry or think­ing skills.”

It is not known how long Willis has had the condition.