Gena Rowlands suffers from Alzheimer’s disease.
A four-time Emmy winner and two-time Golden Globe winner, Jenna is a screen icon beloved by generations of fans.
She is perhaps best known to younger audiences for playing the older Ellie in the romance film Notebook,
And this is where the story takes an ironic turn.
Gena Rowlands’ Alzheimer’s diagnosis and her condition now
Gena Rowlands’ son Nick Cassavetes shared the news of his mother’s condition in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly.
Nick, who directed his mother in 2004 Notebooksaid Rowlands was “in full dementia.”
This diagnosis is largely unrealistic, as Jenna played a woman suffering from dementia in this popular film. She played the older version of Rachel McAdams’ Allie, while James Garner and Ryan Gosling played the older and younger versions of her boyfriend, Noah.
“I asked my mom to play the older Ellie, 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 said. “She’s in full-blown dementia. And it’s so weird — we lived it, she played it, and now it’s on us.”
The sad part is that this disease tends to run in families.
Jenna’s lifelong battle with Alzheimer’s
Gena Rowlands’ mother, actress Lady Rowlands, also had Alzheimer’s disease. While promoting “The Notebook” in 2004, Rowlands told O magazine that she mirrored her mother when playing the role of Ellie.
“This last movie — ‘The Notebook,’ based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks — was especially hard because I play a character who has Alzheimer’s,” Rowlands told the publication at the time. “I went through that with my mom, and if Nic hadn’t directed the movie, I don’t think I would have gone on to do it — it’s so tough. It was a tough but great movie.”
History seems to have a nasty way of repeating itself