Life imitating fiction: the tragic story of Hollywood legend Gena Rowlands

Reality can be stranger than fiction, and sometimes reality is just as harsh as fiction. In the case of Gena Rowlands, the actress was living the same life as one of her most remembered characters: Allie in 'The Notebook'.

Actress Gena Rowlands, 3-time Emmy winner and 2-time Oscar nominee, died in 2024 at the age of 94. She was the mother of Nick Cassavetes, the director of one of her well-remembered films, 'The Notebook'.

Photo: New Line Cinema

Strikingly, the actress suffered from Alzheimer's, the same illness her character had in 'The Notebook.' Rowlands played the older version of Rachel McAdams in the film.

Her son had told the public about his mother's health and the similarities with her character twenty years earlier.

"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," the director told Entertainment Weekly.

"For the last five years, she's had Alzheimer's," he said in an interview shortly before his mother's death. "She's in full dementia. And it's so crazy - we lived it, she acted it, and now it's on us."

If the similarities with 'The Notebook' were harsh, the differences were no less so. In the film, Allie's great love, Noah, is played by Ryan Gosling as a young man and James Garner as an old man. The actor James Garner died at the age of 85.

In the case of Gena Rowlands, the great love of her life died much earlier. John Cassavetes, the father of Nick, died in February 1989 from liver cirrhosis. Although the actress would remarry Robert Forrest in 2012, her marriage to John Cassavetes was real Hollywood history.

The couple met at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York (AADA) and married in 1954 before they were famous.

In fact, their love story has a lot in common with 'The Notebook' - and it's no coincidence. John Cassavetes was the son of Greek immigrants and a womanizer, while Gena Rowlands was a young woman from a wealthy family with the aura of a star even before she was one.

The love between them was instantaneous and continued until death separated them. They had time to work together on 10 films, including some legendary ones like 'Faces' (1968), 'A Woman Under the Influence' (1974), and 'Gloria' (1980).

Their family and cinematographic legacy go hand in hand since the three children they had (Nick, Alexander, and Zoe) have also dedicated themselves to the world of cinema.

As Gena Rowlands confirmed in 'O Magazine' in 2004, "if Nick hadn't directed the film, I don't think I would have gone for it - it's just too hard." So we must give thanks to her son for giving us one of the great Hollywood romances of the 21st century, based on one of the great Hollywood couples of the 20th century.

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