Gena Rowlands has battled Alzheimer’s disease for five years, her son reveals
Hollywood icon Gena Rowlands has been battling Alzheimer’s disease for five years, her son, director Nick Cassavetes, has announced.
Born on June 19th, 1930, in Cambria, Wisconsin, the 94-year-old Rowlands has enjoyed a wildly successful career, earning four Emmys and two Golden Globes. She married another Hollywood legend, actor and director, John Cassavetes, in 1954 and collaborated with him on ten projects, including 1974’s A Woman Under the Influence and 1980’s Gloria. The 1968 picture, cinéma vérité drama Faces, is also one of the pair’s highlights.
Her realistic integrity in Gloria has long been deemed her career highlight, with it and A Woman Uner the Influence earning her ‘Best Actress’ nominations at the Oscars. Rowlands finally won at the Academy Awards in 2015 when she received the ‘Honorary’ award in recognition of her long and distinguished career.
In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Cassavetes announced that his mother has been battling Alzheimer’s for half a decade. Sadly, he says she’s in “full dementia”.
Cassavetes directed his mother in the hit 2004 romantic drama The Notebook, in which she played the older version of Rachel McAdams’ Allie, who suffers from dementia in a nursing home. Given the heartbreaking parallels, Cassavetes told the publication that his mother’s battle is made all the more surreal because of it.
“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.”
Despite the sadness of Rowlands’ current state, Cassavetes has nothing but fond memories of working with his mother on The Notebook. He even provided an anecdote regarding the moment studio executives ordered him to reshoot a scene because they wanted older Allie to cry more when she recognises that James Garner’s character is an older Noah, the love of her life.
“She said, ‘Let me get this straight. We’re reshooting because of my performance?'” the director remembered. “We go to reshoots, and now it’s one of those things where mama’s pissed, and I had asked her, ‘Can you do it, mom?’ She goes, ‘I can do anything.’ I promise you, on my father’s life, this is true: Teardrops came flying out of her eyes [on the first take] when she saw [Garner], and she burst into tears. And I was like, okay, well, we got that… It’s the one time I was in trouble on set.”
Rowlands’ mother, Lady Rowlands, who too starred in a string of John Cassavetes films, also had Alzheimer’s disease. The Notebook star touched on this after the film was released, saying she channelled her mother in her scenes.
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