Gena Rowlands, Star of The Notebook, Has Alzheimer's

glamour.com:

aspects of the beloved romantic drama The Notebook has seemingly come true. 93-year-old Gena Rowlands, who played the dementia-stricken older version of in the 2004 hit, is dealing with Alzheimer's disease, according to her son Nick Cassavetes, who also directed the 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 . "She's in full dementia.

And it's so crazy—we lived it, she acted it, and now it's on us."Nick Cassavetes is the son of Rowlands and actor-filmmaker John Cassavetes, a pioneer of independent cinema best known for his starring role in Rosemary's Baby and for directing his wife in A Woman Under the Influence.

John Cassavetes also cast his mother-in-law, Lady Rowlands (her name, not a title), in some of his films, and she, too, struggled with Alzheimer's during her later years.“This last one—The Notebook, based on the novel by —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,” Gena Rowlands told in 2004. “It's just too hard.