‘Notebook’ Actress Gena Rowlands Dead at 94 After Family Revealed Alzheimer’s Diagnosis

Gena Rowlands, known for her tremendous contributions to the film and television worlds, has died at age 94, Variety confirmed on Wednesday, August 14. Her cause of death was not immediately revealed.

The Opening Night star died in her home in Indian Wells, California, surrounded by her loved ones, TMZ reported.

Her son, Nick Cassavetes, who directed her in The Notebook, previously opened up about his mother’s declining health in the months prior to her death. Per TMZ, he was spotted visiting his mother at her home a number of times before her death.

“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,” he told Entertainment Weekly in June of his mother’s condition. “She’s in full dementia. And it’s so crazy — we lived it, she acted it, and now it’s on us.”

Nick also recalled doing reshoots with his mother and James Garner on the film, and her being shocked.

“She said, ‘Let me get this straight. We’re reshooting because of my performance?'” he shared. “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,'” he said. “I promise you, on 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.”

Ultimately, he was glad to have the opportunity to work on such an impactful film with his mother in 2004.

“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 told the outlet on the film’s 20th anniversary. “It seems to have worked and I’m very proud of it.”

Two decades earlier, Rowlands revealed that her mother had also struggled with the disease, which inspired her to take the role of Allie.

“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 in 2004 “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.”

In addition to Nick, Rowlands is survived by her daughters, Alexandra and Zoe Cassavetes, whom she shared with ex-husband John Cassavetes. She married her second husband, Robert Forrest, in 2012.

With her first husband, she collaborated on multiple projects, including A Woman Under the Influence and Gloria, both of which earned her Academy Award nominations for Best Actress. Other notable works included Hysterical Blindness and What If God Were the Sun.