Academy Award-Winning Star of ‘The Notebook’ Dies After Son Revealed Disease

Getty Gena Rowlands.

“Notebook” actress Gena Rowlands, the winner of an honorary Academy Award, has died at the age of 94, according to The Los Angeles Times.

In an August 14 article, The Times reported that Rowlands died “after a years-long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.” Her death was confirmed to The Times by “the office of Danny Greenberg, Nick Cassavete’s agent at WME,” according to The Times. According to CNN, Nick Cassavetes is Rowlands’ son.

“What’s great about being an actress is you don’t just live one life, you live many lives,” Rowlands said when she received an honorary Oscar, according to The Times. “You are not just stuck with yourself all of your life.”

Gena Rowlands’ Son Revealed That She Was in ‘Full Dementia’ in June

GettyActor John Cassavetes with his wife actress Gena Rowlands arrive to the 47th Academy Awards at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles,California.

According to CNN, Rowlands starred in “early independent cinema alongside her first husband, director John Cassavetes,” and later appeared in well-known movies like “Hope Floats” in 1998 and “The Notebook” in 2004.

She received two Oscar nominations over the course of her career, for “A Woman Under the Influence in 1974 and 1980’s “Gloria,” according to CNN.

Entertainment Weekly reported in June that Rowlands’ son Nick revealed his mom had Alzheimer’s disease, although no official cause of death was released.

He noted that, in “The Notebook,” Rowlands played a character struggling with Alzheimer’s disease named Allie Calhoun. The son directed that film.

“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. “She’s in full dementia. And it’s so crazy — we lived it, she acted it, and now it’s on us.”

Of the film’s enduring qualities, Cassavetes told Entertainment Weekly, “It’s always a shock to hear that as much time has gone by as it has, but it makes sense. I’m just happy that it exists,” he says, adding, “It seems to have worked and I’m very proud of it.”

Gena Rowlands’ Mother Also had Alzheimer’s Disease

GettyAmerican actress Gena Rowlands, UK, 17th October 1968.

Rowland wrote in a column in “O” Magazine that her mother had Alzheimer’s as she spoke about working on “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. 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,” she wrote for O.

She added, “As an actress, I’ve played a lot of mothers. People ask me, ‘Don’t you get sick of it?’ And I think, Why would I get sick of it? Mothers are the most powerful people in the world. They have a lot of influence on their children and try very hard to be a good influence, even though they don’t always succeed. The relationships between children and their mothers—especially sons and mothers, I think—are fascinating.”

Added Rowlands in the article, “You can never tell whether your kids turn out well because that’s the way they are or because you had something to do with it, or whether you hampered them. You can’t really know.”