‘The Notebook’ star Gena Rowlands has Alzheimer’s disease – National
Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actress Gena Rowlands is best known to modern audiences for her emotional performance in Notebookhas Alzheimer’s disease.
Rowland’s son, actor and director Nick Cassavetes, confirmed to Entertainment Weekly that his 94-year-old mother is living with the progressive form of dementia. Rowlands played the older version of Rachel McAdams’ lead character, Allie Hamilton, in Notebook – a character who also develops Alzheimer’s disease.
“I asked my mom to play Allie, the oldest, and we spent a lot of time talking about Alzheimer’s and wanting to be authentic about it, and now, for the past five years, she had Alzheimer’s disease” Cassavetes told the publication, recalling his experience directing the film. “She’s in the middle of a dementia. And it’s so crazy — we lived it, she played it, and now it’s our turn to do it.”
The film version of Notebookbased on the novel of the same name by Nicholas Sparks, celebrates its 20th anniversary this week.
In a 2004 interview with O magazine, Rowlands spoke about the difficulties her own mother, actress Lady Rowland, had faced with the illness and why Playing Allie was “particularly difficult.”
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“This last film, The Notebook, based on the Nicholas Sparks novel, was particularly difficult because I play a character with Alzheimer’s,” she said at the time. “I went through that with my mother, and if Nick hadn’t directed the film, I don’t think I would have agreed to do it, it’s just too hard. It was a difficult but wonderful film.”
Cassavetes told Entertainment Weekly that working with his mother on set required a crucial reshoot, and while his mother wasn’t particularly happy about it, she handled it like a pro.
Gena Rowlands and Rachel McAdams at the premiere of “The Notebook” at New Line Cinema Los Angeles at Mann Village Theatre in Westwood, California.
Ray Mickshaw / WireImage for New Line Cinema
He recalled that in one particular scene, where older Allie finally remembers her longtime love, Noah (played by James Garner), studio executives asked Rowlands to cry more.
When Cassavetes told his mother they had to reshoot the scene, she was not happy. “She said, ‘Let me get this straight. We’re going to reshoot the scene because of My performance?'”
“We go to rehearsals, and now it’s one of those things where Mom gets upset and I ask her, ‘Can you do it, Mom?’ She says, ‘I can do anything,’” he recalls.
And it only took one take.
“I promise you, on my father’s life, it’s true: tears flowed from her eyes when she saw (Garner), and she burst into tears. And I thought, okay, well, we get it… That’s the only time I ever got in trouble on set.
American director Nick Cassavetes (left) and his mother and lead actress Gena Rowlands pose for a photocall for “The Notebook” in 2004.
Mychele Daniau / AFP via Getty Images
In 2015, Rowlands received an honorary Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement. She made her film debut in the 1958 comedy The high cost of livingShe also received Oscar nominations for her work in the 1974 film A woman under the influence and the 1980s Gloria.
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