My Father, Myself

To come to terms with her father’s diagnosis, Tallulah Willis has had to reckon with health struggles of her own. As told to Rob Haskell.

- By Tallulah Willis

I was 11 and sitting alone in the guest room of the penthouse apartment that my parents owned in the San Remo, on Central Park West, when my world changed entirely.

I had flown to New York with my mother, Demi Moore, and her partner at the time, Ashton Kutcher, for an event the night before. I had worn a mink capelet—I felt awfully grown-up and was very pleased with myself—and I wanted to see if my outfit had made the party pages of any of the style websites. So I opened my laptop and went to the usual places (this was the heyday of Perez Hilton; celebrity kids were fair game), and there I was in my tween-age awkwardness, standing beside my famously beautiful mom. Then I found my way to the comments, hundreds of them, the words just burning off the screen. Wow, she looks deformed. Look at her man jaw—she’s like an ugly version of her dad. Her mother must be so disappointed. I remember how deadly silent the room was. I sat reading for two hours, believing that I had stumbled onto a truth about myself that no one had told me because they were trying to protect me. And for years afterward, protecting people right back, I told no one. I just lived with the silent certainty of my own ugliness.