‘The Notebook’ Star Gena Rowlands, 94, Has Alzheimer’s Disease

Sometimes life really does imitate art.

Actress Gena Rowlands — who portrayed a woman with Alzheimer’s in the 2004 film The Notebook — is in “full dementia,” according to her son Nick Cassavetes, who directed his mother in the iconic romance.

“It’s so crazy — we lived it, she acted it, and now it’s on us,” he told Entertainment Weekly, recalling the classic film on its 20th anniversary.

“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 the digital magazine.

Dementia can be caused by several different conditions that impair thinking and memory, and eventually daily life. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, and may account for as much as 70 percent of the world’s 55 million people with dementia. The National Institute on Aging suggests that more than 6 million Americans — mostly age 65 or older — may have Alzheimer’s.

For family members such as Cassavetes and family caregivers who are watching a parent’s cognitive decline, experts say alternative ways to interact are required. Explaining something over and over won’t make someone with memory issues remember. Instead, they recommend redirecting attention and focus rather than arguing. And, for those who have dementia and who exhibit angry outbursts, suggesting rather than bossing a person with memory loss will result in better outcomes, they say.

Cassavetes says Rowlands, now 94, has been struggling with the disease’s progressive decline. His grandmother (Rowlands’ mother), also suffered from its effects, which he says was one reason his mother hesitated to play the older version of the film’s lead character, Allie.

James Garner and Gena Rowlands in the 2004 film “The Notebook.”

New Line Cinema/Everett Collection

“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,” Rowlands told O, The Oprah Magazine in 2004.

Science hasn’t yet determined a definitive cause for Alzheimer’s disease. Instead, it appears to be a combination of age-related changes in the brain, as well as genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors. Just which factor may be more or less important in increasing or decreasing the risk of developing Alzheimer’s differs from person to person, according to the National Institute on Aging.

Rachael McAdams portrayed the younger Allie in what’s become a cult rom-com based upon the 1996 novel of the same name by author Nicholas Sparks. The film recounts a love story in the present, read from a notebook recalling the past. The tale has also spawned The Notebook, the Musical, which opened on Broadway in March.

A screen legend, Rowlands had a movie career that spanned nearly seven decades. She’s also a four-time Emmy winner and two-time Golden Globe winner. Rowlands is best known for her collaborations with her late husband, John Cassavetes, an actor and filmmaker whose movies include A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and Gloria (1980). Rowlands received an honorary Academy Award in 2015 after being nominated twice.