Gena Rowlands is living with Alzheimer’s disease

In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, actor and director Nick Cassavetes revealed that his mother, the legendary actress Gena Rowlands, is currently living with Alzheimer’s disease. Over her storied career, Rowlands earned two Oscar nods for her work in A Woman Under The Influence (1974) and Gloria (1980), and received an honorary Academy Award in 2015.

To many, however, the now 93-year-old actor is best known for playing the older version of Allie (Rachel McAdams’ character) in The Notebook, which her son directed. In the film, Rowlands’ character also had Alzheimer’s 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 had Alzheimer’s,” Cassavetes told EW in a retrospective on the 2004 film for its 20th anniversary. “She’s in full dementia. And it’s so crazy—we lived it, she acted it, and now it’s on us.”

Rowlands’ mother and Cassavetes’ grandmother, the actress Lady Rowlands, also had the disease. In a 2004 interview with O Magazine, Rowlands reflected on how challenging it was for her to step into her mother’s shoes when shooting the film. “The Notebook, based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks—was particularly hard because I play a character who has Alzheimer’s,” she told the outlet. “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. It was a tough but wonderful movie.”

Cassavetes also shared a poignant memory of his time filming with his mom with EW. Apparently, when the director sent a draft of the film to studio executives, they gave him the note that Rowlands needed to cry more at the end when she remembers who she is and reconnects with Noah, played at this point by James Garner. “She said, ‘Let me get this straight. We’re reshooting because of my performance?’” Cassavetes recalled his mother commenting.

“We go to reshoots, and now it’s one of those things where mama’s pissed and I had asked her, ‘Can you do it, mom?’ She goes, ‘I can do anything,’” he continued. On the very first take, he says, “I promise you, on my father’s life, this is true: Teardrops came flying out of her eyes when she saw [Garner], and she burst into tears. And I was like, okay, well, we got that… It’s the one time I was in trouble on set.”