admin Gena Rowlands, an Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actress, best known to modern audiences for her heartfelt performance in The Notebook, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Her son, actor and director Nick Cassavetes, confirmed to Entertainment Weekly that his 94-year-old mother is living with this progressive form of dementia. Rowlands portrayed the older version of Allie Hamilton, the main character played by Rachel McAdams in The Notebook, who also develops Alzheimer’s disease.
“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 the publication, recalling his time as director of the film. “She’s in full dementia. And it’s so crazy — we lived it, she acted it, and now it’s on us.”
The film adaptation of The Notebook, based on Nicholas Sparks’ novel, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this week.
In a 2004 interview with O magazine, Rowlands discussed the challenges her own mother, actress Lady Rowland, faced with the disease, and explained why portraying Allie was “particularly hard.”
“This last one — The Notebook, based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks — was particularly hard because I play a character who has Alzheimer’s,” she said at the time. “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.”
Cassavetes shared with Entertainment Weekly that working with his mother on set necessitated a crucial retake. Although she wasn’t particularly pleased about it, she handled it like a true professional.
He recalled that in one particular scene, where the older Allie finally remembers her longtime love, Noah (played by James Garner), studio executives requested that Rowlands show more emotion and cry more.
When Cassavetes informed his mum about the need for a reshoot, she wasn’t happy. “Let me get this straight. We’re reshooting because of my performance?”
“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, mum?’ She goes, ‘I can do anything,’” he recalled.
And it only took one take.
“I promise you, in my father’s life, this is true: Teardrops came flying out of her eyes when she saw (Garner), and she burst into tears. And I was like, okay, well, we got that… It’s the one time I was in trouble on set.”
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