The Notebook’s Gena Rowlands Is Living With Alzheimer’s

Her son, Nick Cassavetes, shared that the legendary film actress is now “in full dementia.”

Legendary film actress Gena Rowlands is living with Alzheimer’s and has been for the past five years. Her son, actor and director Nick Cassavetes, shared the news with EW during a conversation about the 20-year anniversary of The Notebook. In the film, Cassavetes directed Rowlands as an older version of the main character, Allie, who herself suffers from Alzheimer’s later in life.

“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,” said the director. “She’s in full dementia. And it’s so crazy — we lived it, she acted it, and now it’s on us.”

Rowlands’s mother, actress Lady Rowlands, also had Alzheimer’s. In a 2004 O magazine interview, she said the role was “particularly hard” because of her personal connection to the disease. “I went through that 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,” she said. “It was a tough but wonderful movie.”

Rowlands, 94, had acted in more than 100 film and TV projects and several stage productions before she retired in 2017. She made ten films with her first husband, the director John Cassavetes, two of which earned her Oscar nominations. Reflecting on working with his mother on The Notebook, Nick told EW: “It’s always a shock to hear that as much time has gone by as it has, but it makes sense. I’m just happy that it exists.”