Actress from ‘The Notebook’ Diagnosed with Alzheimer’s
Real life sometimes mirrors art. Unfortunately, the actress Gena Rowlands, who portrayed the elderly wife with Alzheimer’s in The Notebook, is now living with the same disease.
Recently, Rowlands’ son Nick Cassavetes gave Entertainment Weekly an update. If you didn’t know, Cassavetes directed the 2004 romance film. His mother portrayed the role of Allie in her later years living in a nursing home with dementia from Alzheimer’s disease. The Notebook, shows her husband Noah, played by James Garner, retelling their love story to her in hopes that she’ll remember their life together. And she does, for very brief moments, before ultimately passing away.
Gena Rowlands’ Role In The Notebook
When Gena Rowlands assumed the role, she was in her early 70s. Now, at 93, her son Nick reports that she is experiencing remarkably similar symptoms to her character from the film. He discussed this ahead of the movie’s 20th anniversary. Like the older Allie, Rowlands also has severe dementia after seemingly being diagnosed about five years ago.
“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,” Nick told Entertainment Weekly. “She’s in full dementia. And it’s so crazy — we lived it, she acted it, and now it’s on us.”
The outlet also reported that Gena Rowlands’ mother, Lady Rowlands, also had Alzheimer’s disease. Given the pain of that real-life experience, the actress previously said she would’ve passed on the role. Part of the reason she moved forward with acting in The Notebook was because her son Nick was its director.
“I’ve acted in a number of projects that Nick has directed. This last one… was particularly hard because I play a character who has Alzheimer’s. 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. It was a tough but wonderful movie,” she told O Magazine in 2004.
Cassavetes didn’t elaborate further on his mother’s illness or care situation. Despite these current challenges, the director expressed pride in their collaboration on The Notebook, even two decades later.
The Notebook is an American romantic drama film adapted from Nicholas Sparks’ 1996 novel. The screenplay, by Jeremy Leven and Jan Sardi, follows a young couple, portrayed by Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, who discover love during the 1940s. The story unfolds as an elderly man recounts their story from his notebook to a fellow resident in a nursing home.
