‘The Notebook’ actress Gena Rowlands dies

Gena Rowlands, the Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning actress from “The Notebook,” has died.

She was 94.

Her death was confirmed by her son’s representatives. Rowlands’ son is Nick Cassavetes, the film’s director Nick Cassavetes, The Associated Press reported.

TMZ reported Rowlands died at her home in Indian Wells, California on Wednesday surrounded by her family, husband Robert Cassavetes and daughter Alexandria Cassavetes.

Rowlands, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, frequently worked with her late husband John Cassavetes to make films that focused on the working class or people from small towns such as “A Woman Under the Influence,” “Gloria” and “Faces.” Over 40 years, the couple made 10 films together.

Her son said that his mother had been battling Alzheimer’s for five years when he announced Rowlands’ diagnosis on the 20th anniversary of “The Notebook” and at the time had progressed to “full dementia,” Entertainment Weekly reported.

“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,” Nick Cassavetes told the publication in June. “She’s in full dementia. And it’s so crazy — we lived it, she acted it, and now it’s on us.”

His grandmother, Rowland’s mother, Lady Rowlands also had Alzheimer’s.

Her role in “The Notebook” introduced Rowlands to a new generation playing a woman who is suffering from memory loss and who is looking back at her life. The younger version of the character was played by Rachael McAdams.

In addition to “The Notebook” made by her son Nick Cassavetes, she also appeared in his “Unhook the Stars” in 1996.

Gena Rowlands’ last roles were in the film “Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks” in 2014 opposite Cheyenne Jackson and the 2017 short “Unfortunate Circumstances,” according to her IMDB filmography.

Gena Rowlands was nominated for an Academy Award twice for films she made with her husband, “A Woman Under the Influence” in 1974 and “Gloria” in 1980, the AP said.

Speaking of her late husband and their on-screen partnership, Gena Rowlands told the AP in 2015, “He had a particular sympathetic interest in women and their problems in society, how they were treated and how they solved and overcame what they needed to, so all his movies have some interesting women, and you don’t need many.”

She also won three Primetime Emmy Awards, a Daytime Emmy and two Golden Globes, and was honored in 2015 with an honorary Academy Award for her Hollywood legacy.

Rowlands leaves behind her husband Robert Forrest, and two children. She lost her third child, a daughter named Zoe, who died in 1989 from cirrhosis complications, People magazine reported.

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