Rumer Willis says winning DWTS let her step out of her parents' shadow

How do you forge your own identity when it's almost impossible to step out of a spotlight created before you were born?

For Rumer Willis, 37, the answer was simple: earn something that her parents couldn’t give her.

As the eldest daughter of Hollywood stars Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, Rumer was born famous, but she never felt known for her own accomplishments.

“I feel like most of the time I have been in a world where I’m known either for my parents or something else,” she said while speaking on a panel at the Dancing With the Stars convention in Palm Springs.

Willis believed that winning DWTS would mean more than raising the Mirrorball Trophy; it would give her an identity entirely her own. 

“I felt like this was an opportunity to do something that was totally mine,” she said.

But before she could win, she had to overcome a significant problem: she didn’t know how to dance.

“The first time I met Val, I’d never had any dance experience in my life—not in my life, like a tutu class when I was like four.”

She also faced some seriously talented competition, including Riker Lynch, who had a musical theater background, and Olympic gymnast Nastia Liukin, who was partnered with the always formidable Derek Hough. 

“There were some really good dancers our season. Riker was unbelievable. And I was like, ‘Okay, I can’t even turn without looking like a troll. What am I going to do? I can’t spot. I’m so dyslexic. I don’t know which way is which.’”

Willis understood that to accomplish something completely her own, she had to give the competition everything she had. 

“I came every day, and I cleared my schedule. This was all. I was like, ‘I’m going to become a dancer. I’m going to do this.’”

That commitment paid off when she and Val performed their first dance together. 

“When I did that first dance, I just felt so alive, and I felt like, ‘All right, I can do this. I think—I think we might be able to win.’”

However, even her confidence couldn’t make up for the punishing pace of learning multiple dances in a single week. 

“There were dances that I did not get right till the show, especially when we were learning two or three dances in four days.”

But as the weeks progressed, Willis realized she was doing more than competing for a trophy, and she reveled in the fact that for the first time, audiences could see her on her own terms. 

“I think the biggest gift, even more so than dancing, is—I felt like I had an opportunity to share a piece of my heart and my soul and, like, who I am with all of you in a way that I’ve never gotten to do before.”

By the time she reached the finale, an act of faith had become one of accomplishment.

She had outlasted every competitor but one. Willis still hadn’t separated herself from Riker. They were tied at 80 heading into the final competition episode, and each earned a perfect score with their last dance. 

Everything came down to the audience vote. 

She recalled the moment when she heard her name announced as a winner. 

“And when they called our name at the end, it was just one of the best moments I think I’ve ever had because I don’t think I’ve ever worked that hard at anything and had something that I loved so much.”

The victory changed not only how Willis saw herself, but how others described her. 

“The first thing that would come before my name would be my parents’ names, and now it’s that I’m a Dancing with the Stars winner, and I’ll take it!”

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