Gena Rowlands, the star of The Notebook and A Woman Under The Influence, is living with Alzheimer’s disease, her son Nick Cassavetes has confirmed.
He revealed the news in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, where he discussed the particularly unusual situation he is in, having directed his mother as a woman with dementia in 2004’s The Notebook.
Rowlands, who is considered a legend of screen acting, is now 94, and according to her son, she has been living with the condition for the last five years.
Cassavetes was giving the interview to mark the 20th anniversary of the romantic drama, in which Rowlands plays the older version of Rachel McAdams’ Allie. James Garner and Ryan Gosling played the older and younger versions of her partner Noah.
“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,” he said. “She’s in full dementia. And it’s so crazy — we lived it, she acted it, and now it’s on us.”
Rowlands was married to the cult independent filmmaker John Cassavetes, and starred in 10 of his films, picking up Oscar nominations for two of them: A Woman Under The Influence (1974) and Gloria (1980). Cassavetes died in 1989.
She also won the Silver Bear award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1977 for Opening Night, another Cassavetes film, and starred in Woody Allen’s Another Woman in 1988. She also picked up an honorary Oscar in 2015.
Rowlands’ legacy is still keenly felt – in January, Wednesday and Scream star Jenna Ortega named A Woman Under The Influence as her favourite film of all time.
Rowlands’ most recent screen role was in the 2014 comedy Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks, alongside Cheyenne Jackson.