Celebrated actress and honorary Academy Award recipient Gena Rowlands has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Rowlands’ son, the director and actor Nick Cassavetes, revealed the news while speaking with Entertainment Weekly about the 20th anniversary of his film, The Notebook. In the movie, Rowlands famously played the older version of Allie, Rachel McAdams’ character, who was also suffering from dementia.
“I got my mom to play older Allie, and we spent a lot of time talking about Alzheimer’s and wanting to be authentic with it, and now, for the last five years, she’s had Alzheimer’s,” Cassavetes said. “She’s in full dementia. And it’s so crazy — we lived it, she acted it, and now it’s on us.”
Rowlands’ mother (and Cassavetes’ grandmother), Lady Rowlands, also suffered from Alzheimer’s. And in a 2004 interview with O magazine about The Notebook, Rowlands spoke about taking on the role, and drawing on her own experiences with her mother.
“I went through [Alzheimer’s] with my mother, and if Nick hadn’t directed the film, I don’t think I would have gone for it — it’s just too hard,” Rowlands said. “It was a tough but wonderful movie.”
Rowlands is best known for her work with her late husband (and Nick’s father), the actor and filmmaker John Cassavetes. The couple made ten films together, including 1974’s A Woman Under the Influence, 1977’s Opening Night, and 1980’s Gloria. Rowlands was twice nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars for her performances in A Woman Under the Influence and Gloria; she eventually received an Honorary Academy Award in 2015.
Along with her numerous film credits, Rowlands was a frequent presence on television. She ultimately won three Emmys for her work on the miniseries The Betty Ford Story (1987), Face of a Stranger (1992), and Hysterical Blindness (2003).
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