Gena Rowlands, the award-winning actor who transitioned from her beginnings in theater to star in her debut film role, “The High Cost of Loving,” in 1958, died Wednesday at her home in Indian Wells, California, at the age of 94.
The news of Rowlands' death was confirmed by the office of her son Nick Cassavetes' agent and while a cause of death was not immediately shared, word spread in June that her health had taken a turn following an Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
Cassavetes, who directed his mother in the 2004 film "The Notebook," told Entertainment Weekly at that time, “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. She’s in full dementia. And it’s so crazy — we lived it, she acted it and now it’s on us.” Rowlands' mother, actor Lady Rowlands, also suffered from the disease.
“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 — it’s just too hard,” Rowlands told O magazine in 2004. “It was a tough but wonderful movie.”
Rowlands, who appeared most recently in TV shows including "Monk" and "NCIS," was awarded four Emmy awards during her lustrous career.
The star, who graced the screen for decades alongside her husband John Cassavetes, who passed in 1989, was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association in 2015 and was given an Honorary Academy Award that same year.
