Gena Rowlands, Screen Legend and Star ofThe Notebook, Dies at 94 After Dementia Diagnosis

Mar. 15, 2025

Gena Rowlands in ‘The Notebook’.Photo: Courtesy Everette Collection

Gena Rowlands, screen icon best known forA Woman Under the InfluenceandThe Notebook, has died. She was 94.

In June 2024, Nick toldEntertainment Weeklythat his mother wasdiagnosed with Alzheimer’s diseasefive years ago.

Rowlands was born in June 1930 in Cambria, Wisconsin. She began acting in the 1950s and made her Broadway debut inThe Seven Year Itch.

In 1958, she made her film debut inThe High Cost of Loving.

It was her marriage to Cassavetes which led to some of her best-known roles. The two collaborated together on 10 films such asA Child Is Waiting, Faces, Machine Gun McCain, Minnie and Moskowitz,andTempest.

Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes.Mike McKeown/Getty Images

Two of their films, 1974’sA Woman Under the Influenceand 1980’sGloriaresulted in Rowlands’ Oscar nominations for Best Actress.

In 1984, Rowlandstold PEOPLE, “John and I probably disagree on just about everything in the world.”

Describing their marriage as “volatile,” the actress added, “But that’s what marriage is all about. If you think a marriage isn’t going to be like that, you’ve got trouble.”

Rowlands went on to star in Woody Allen’s 1988 filmAnother Womanin which she played a middle-aged professor who goes on a journey of self-discovery after she overhears a therapy session involving another woman (Mia Farrow).

In 1992, she won her second Emmy Award forFace of a Stranger.Her third Emmy win came in 2003’s HBO filmHysterical Blindness.

Rowlands inA Woman Under the Influence.Courtesy Everette Collection

In 2015, she was awarded an honorary Oscar, and accepted the award at the Governors Awards that year, thanking her late husband for his contribution to her many successes.

“You know what is wonderful about being an actress?” she said in her acceptance speech. “You live many lives.”

Rowlands was married to John from 1954, until his death on February 3, 1989, from complications of cirrhosis at 59. The two met while at the American Academy at Carnegie Hall where they were both students.

“The one thing I never wanted to do was to fall in love or get married or have children,” she said. “I wanted to act.”

Cassavetes introduced himself after a student performance she was in. Rowlands revealed it would take the actor-director three years to convince her to be with him.

When asked how he managed to woo her, Rowlands told the magazine, “Life has its little surprises.”

Gena Rowlands in 2016.Todd Williamson/Getty Images

The couple had three children together: Nick, Zoe and Alexandra. Rowlands remarried in 2012 to retired businessman Robert Forrest.

Rowlands revealed in a 2016 interview withVarietythat her favorite film with her late husband wasA Woman Under the Influence.

“You were dealing with a woman who was a little wacky to begin with and she was obsessively in love with her husband,” Rowlands said. “She got into such real trouble with her own psyche that she had a major nervous breakdown.”

“I found it so touching,” she continued.

“I didn’t think it would have that kind of impact,” she said. “I think it was such a big hit because it was about the realization that love can last your whole life. You don’t see it depicted that way a lot.”

“In most films, you don’t get to see a story like that go from the beginning to the end with the possibility that love can be perhaps eternal.”

When Nick revealed thatRowlands had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, he toldEntertainment Weeklyit was “crazy” that inThe Notebookhis mother had played a character with the same disease.

“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 hadAlzheimer’s,” he explained. “She’s in full dementia. And it’s so crazy — we lived it, she acted it, and now it’s on us.”

source: people.com