Hollywood star Gena Rowlands, who was best known for her role in the 2004 movie The Notebook, died on Wednesday after a battle with Alzheimer’s disease. She was 94 years-old.
Rowlands Passes Away
TMZ confirmed that Rowlands died at her home in Indian Welles, California surrounded by her husband and daughter. Her son Nick Cassavetes, who directed The Notebook, had visited her many times over the past week.
Rowlands’ death came two months after Cassavetes, 65, revealed her Alzheimer’s diagnosis to the world. This was particularly sad to fans of The Notebook. Ironically, in the romantic drama, Rowlands’ character of Allie develops dementia.
“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 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.”
Full Story: ‘The Notebook’ Star’s Heartbreaking Health Update, Twenty Years After Playing Character With Dementia
Rowlands’ mother Lady Rowlands also suffered from Alzheimer’s for the last five years of her life before she died in 1999 at the age of 95.
Rowlands addressed that very thing while talking about The Notebook.
“This last one — The Notebook, based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks — was particularly hard because I play a character who has Alzheimer’s,” Rowlands said in 2004. “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.”
Rowlands’ History
Born in June of 1930 in Cambria, Wisconsin, Rowlands started acting in the 1950s. She quickly made her Broadway debut in The Seven Year Itch. Rowlands later made her film debut in the 1958 movie The High Cost of Loving.
Rowlands married her first husband, the Hollywood director John Cassavetes, in 1954. She starred in many of his films in the decades to come.
Two of their films, 1974’s A Woman Under the Influence and 1980’s Gloria, garnered Rowlands her two Oscar nominations for Best Actress in a Leading Role. She lost the first award to Ellen Burstyn for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. The second time she was nominated, Rowlands lost to Sissy Spacek for Coal Miner’s Daughter.
Rowlands’ final film role was in the 2014 comedy Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks, which starred Cheyenne Jackson.
Rowlands’ ‘Volatile’ Marriage
In a 1984 interview, Rowlands described her marriage to Cassavetes as being “volatile.”
“John and I probably disagree on just about everything in the world,” she told People Magazine at the time. “But that’s what marriage is all about. If you think a marriage isn’t going to be like that, you’ve got trouble.”
Cassavetes died in 1989 at the age of 59 after a battle with alcoholism. Rowlands went on to marry the retired businessman Robert Forrester in 2012, and he survives her. Rowlands is also survived by her three children and five grandchildren. Please join us in saying a prayer for them as they mourn this incredible woman!
More About:Movie News