Legendary actor Gena Rowlands, an honorary Oscar recipient and four-time Emmy winner, has Alzheimer's disease, her son says. Director Nick Cassavetes told that his 94-year-old mother, who played a character with dementia in his has the same illness. In the film, Rowlands played an older version of Allie, the same character portrayed by Rachel McAdams.
"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 said. “She’s in full dementia. And it’s so crazy — we lived it, she acted it, and now it’s on us.
” Rowlands shared in a 2004 interview with that her performance in "The Notebook" was informed by her experience with her own mother, Lady Rowlands, who also had Alzheimer's disease. "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," she told the magazine. "It was a tough but wonderful movie.
" Cassavetes recalled to Entertainment Weekly how the studio wanted him to reshoot a scene in "The Notebook" with Rowlands' character crying more at the end while remembering her longtime love played by James Garner. “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,’” Cassavetes said. "I promise you, on my father’s life, this is tru.
