Credits: 20th Century Fox / Wikimedia Commons — Public domain.
The legendary American actress Gena Rowlands, aged 94, has Alzheimer’s disease, her son, director Nick Cassavetes, announced in an interview.
As irony would have it, in 2004 she had portrayed in The Notebook a woman suffering from that same disease, alongside Ryan Gosling and lovely Rachel McAdams. In that film, Gena Rowlands played the older version of Allie, portrayed by Rachel McAdams, a woman who had forgotten her past.
Every day, an old man read her the same book telling a 1930s love story between Allie Hamilton, a privileged young woman, and Noah Calhoun, a laborer.
"I asked my mother to play older Allie, and we talked a lot about Alzheimer’s to make it authentic," Nick Cassavetes explained. "And now, for the past five years, she has had this disease. She is in full dementia. And it’s so crazy — we lived it, she played it, and now it’s happening to us."
Gena Rowlands’ own mother had also suffered from Alzheimer’s, which led the actress to accept this difficult role.
A memorable actress with a career spanning at least seven decades, Gena Rowlands worked with renowned directors such as William Friedkin, Lasse Hallsröm and Jim Jarmush. In 2016, she received an honorary Oscar for her lifetime achievement.
Together with director and actor John Cassavetes, she formed a legendary couple in Hollywood. Together, they made eight films, including A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and Gloria (1980). They had three children who found their place in film: director Nick Cassavetes, actress and director Alexandra Cassavetes, and screenwriter Zoe Cassavetes.