Oscar-winning actress Gena Rowlands dies at 94

Gena Rowlands, the Oscar-winning US actress, has passed away at the age of 94.

Rowlands’ demise was confirmed by her son Nick Cassavetes via Instagram on Thursday morning.

In June, Cassavetes revealed that his mum had been battling with Alzheimer’s disease — a type of dementia that affects memory, thinking, and behavior. Symptoms eventually grow severe enough to interfere with daily tasks.

Cassavetes also said his mother had dementia. He said Gena was intentional about playing the character Allie Calhoun, who struggled with Alzheimer’s in ‘The Notebook’, the 2004 film.

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

Gena started her career on television in New York in the 1950s. She featured in several movies including ‘The High Cost of Loving’ in 1958, ‘Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks’, ‘Lonely Are the Brave’, ‘Minnie and Moskowitz’, and ‘Faces’.

Others include ‘Opening Night’, ‘Another Woman’, ‘Hope Floats’, ‘Unhook the Stars’, ‘Hope Floats’, ‘Playing by Heart’, ‘The Notebook’, and ‘Broken English’.

Rowlands was a four-time Emmy Award winner and a two-time Golden Globe winner.

She was nominated for two Academy Awards for her role in ‘A Woman Under the Influence’, the 1974 movie, and ‘Gloria’, a film released in 1980.

The two projects were directed by John Cassavetes, her late husband and filmmaker.

Gena was awarded an honorary Oscar in 2015 for her “extraordinary lifetime achievement” in cinema.