‘The Notebook’ Actress Gena Rowlands Dead at 94
Two-time Academy Award-nominated actress Gena Rowlands has died. She was 94.
Rowlands, who received two Best Actress nominations for her leading roles in 1974’s A Woman Under the Influence and 1980’s Gloria, died on Wednesday, Aug. 14, according to TMZ. She was reportedly at her home in Indian Wells, Calif., with some of her family members at the time of her passing.
Rowlands’ son, Nick Cassavetes, recently provided an update on his mother’s health while speaking with Entertainment Weekly earlier this summer. As Cassavetes noted at the time of the interview, Rowlands was battling Alzheimer’s, a disease he said she had been fighting “for the last five years.” Rowland’s mother, actress Lady Rowlands, also had Alzheimer’s.
One of Rowlands’ most memorable roles from the last couple of decades was in 2004’s The Notebook, a film in which she played an older version of Rachel McAdams’ character, Allie Hamilton. Rowland’s version of the character was battling dementia—a detail that Cassavetes described as “so crazy” years later, telling EW, “We lived it, she acted it, and now it's on us.”
Rowlands was born in 1930 and began acting in New York in the 1950s. Her early career often featured collaborations with her filmmaker husband, John Cassavetes, with whom she shared Nick and daughters Alexandra and Zoe. Years after her first husband’s death in 1989, Rowlands got married again in 2012 to Robert Forrest, who TMZ reported was among those with her at the time of her death.
Rowlands was recognized for her decades-long film career with an honorary Oscar in 2015. She was described as “an original talent whose devotion to her craft has earned her worldwide recognition as an independent film icon” by The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the time her honorary award was announced.
Details regarding Rowlands’ cause of death were not immediately released to the public.
