“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.”A Wisconsin native, Rowlands made her film debut in the 1958 comedy “The High Cost of Living” after working in television and on the Broadway stage.
As the older, dementia-stricken Allie, Rowlands appeared primarily in scenes opposite actor James Garner, who portrayed the older version of, Rowlands described the challenging process of playing a character with Alzheimer’s after witnessing her own mother’s experience with 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,” she said at the time. “It was a tough but wonderful movie.