The actress, who played a woman with Alzheimer’s in the film ‘The Notebook,’ has been struggling with the disease for the last five years, according to her son Nick Cassavetes.
Actress Gena Rowlands has Alzheimer’s disease, according to her son Nick Cassavetes, who directed his mother in 2004’s The Notebook.
The director and actor told Entertainment Weekly that it was “crazy” that his mother played a woman with cognitive decline in the iconic romance — and now she’s struggling with the progressive disease herself.
“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,” Cassavetes told EW about his mother, now 93, who played the older version of Rachael McAdams’ character in the film.
“She’s in full dementia. And it’s so crazy — we lived it, she acted it, and now it’s on us.”
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, thought to be the cause of up to 70% of the 55 million people globally with dementia. While a definitive cause for it has yet to be identified, the National Institute on Aging says it’s a “combination of age-related changes in the brain, along with genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors.”
The Mayo Clinic estimates that 6.5 million people in the United States (65 and older) have Alzheimer’s, with more than 70% of those patients being 75 years old and older.
Rowlands — who was presented with an honorary Academy Award in 2015 after two nominations — has said that her mother Lady’s experience with Alzheimer’s nearly kept her from taking on the memorable role of older Allie in The Notebook, which just celebrated its 20th year anniversary.
“This last one — The Notebook, based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks — 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,” she told O magazine in 2004.
“It’s just too hard. It was a tough but wonderful movie.”
Cassavetes echoed those sentiments, telling EW that the movie “holds up pretty good” after two decades.
“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,” he told the outlet.
“It seems to have worked,” he said, “and I’m very proud of it.”
