The celebrated actor and honorary Academy Award recipient Gena Rowlands is suffering from Alzheimer's disease, her son, the filmmaker Nick Cassavetes, has revealed.
Cassavetes, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly published Tuesday, said Rowlands has had Alzheimer's for five years. In the 2004 film "The Notebook," Cassavetes directed his mother, who played the older version of the character played by Rachel McAdams, as a woman with dementia.
"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 said. "She's in full dementia. And it's so crazy — we lived it, she acted it, and now it's on us."
A representative for Rowlands confirmed that Cassavetes "speaks for the family."
Rowlands, who received an honorary Oscar in 2015, made 10 films with her husband, John Cassavetes, including 1974's "A Woman Under the Influence" and 1980's "Gloria." She was Oscar nominated for both performances. She also won four Emmy awards. Her last credited performance was the 2014 comedy "Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks."
Rowlands's mother, actor Lady Rowlands, also had Alzheimer's. During the making of "The Notebook," Gena Rowlands said she channeled her mother.
"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."
Emmy Awards ratings up more than 50%, reversing record lows
The Emmys telecast on ABC reached nearly 7 million viewers, a jump of more than 50%from the record low of the last ceremony in January and the biggest audience since 2021, according to numbers released Monday by the network.
Sunday night's 76th Primetime Emmy Awards, in which "Shogun," "Hacks" and "Baby Reindeer" won top awards, was back in its traditional mid-September spot after the rare January ceremony that was delayed four months by Hollywood's strikes.
That show, which aired on Fox, reached a record low audience of 4.3 million viewers.
ABC said Monday that the Sunday night show hosted by Eugene and Dan Levy reached 6.87 million viewers, a jump of 54% despite competition from NFL football.
The height-of-the-pandemic Emmys in 2020 on ABC, with no in-person audience and remote nominees, set a new low at the time with 6.1 million viewers. The show bounced back the following year with 7.4 million for CBS with help from an NFL game lead-in.
But NBC's 2022 telecast dropped to 5.9 million, followed by the further decline in January of this year.
The Emmys telecast rotates annually between the four broadcast networks.
The last time the Emmys reached more than 10 million viewers was 2018, when it drew in 10.2 million. The show had 21.8 million viewers in 2000, a level it's unlikely ever to reach again.
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