The notebook Star Gena Rowlands has been living with Alzheimer’s disease for five years, said her son, director and actor Nick Cassavetes.
Rowlands, 94, played the older version of Rachel McAdams’ lead character Allie in the 2004 romantic drama – based on the bestselling novel by Nicholas Sparks. Allie dies at the end of the film after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
“I got my mom to play the older Allie, and we spent a lot of time talking about Alzheimer’s and wanted to deal with it authentically, and now, for five years, she’s had Alzheimer’s,” Cassavetes said. Weekly entertainment.
“She’s completely demented. And it’s so crazy – we experienced it, she acted it out, and now it’s our turn.” The notebook said the director.
In conversation with O Magazine In a 2004 interview, Rowlands spoke about how her mother’s struggle with the same illness influenced her decision to accept the role.
“This last – The notebook “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 it, I don’t think I would have dared to do it – it’s just too hard. It was a hard but wonderful film.”
The notebookReleased in 2004, it stars McAdams and Ryan Gosling as Allie and Noah, two young adults from very different socioeconomic backgrounds who fall in love in 1940s South Carolina. After Noah is drafted to serve in World War II, Allie begins a romance with another man. When Noah returns home, however, it becomes clear that his romance with Allie is here to stay.
Rowlands, who has retired from acting, had a glittering career in film, television and theater, earning two Oscar nominations for her breakthrough role in the 1974 drama Woman under influence and 1980s Gloria.
She was married to filmmaker and actor John Cassavetes from 1954 until his death in 1989. In addition to Nick, they have two other children: the director and Broken English Actress Zoe Cassavetes and director and actress Alexandra “Xan” Cassavetes. Rowlands married retired businessman Robert Forrest in 2012.
He remembers a funny memory from working with his mother at The notebooksaid Nick EW about how, after seeing the final cut, studio executives asked Rowlands to cry more at the end of the film when her character finally remembers who she is.
“She said, ‘Let me get this straight. We are reshooting because My Performance?'” Nick said.
“We go to reshoots, and now it’s one of those things where mom is mad and I asked her, ‘Can you do this, mom?’ She says, ‘I can do anything,'” he recalled, adding, “I swear to you, on my father’s life, this is true: tears were streaming from her eyes when she saw (James Garner), and she burst out crying. And I thought, OK, well, we have The… It was the only time I had trouble on set.”
