American actress Gena Rowlands has died at the age of 94, her son has said.

Nick Cassavetes revealed in June that his mother, who won four Emmy awards and two Golden Globes, had Alzheimer’s disease and was “in full dementia”.

Rowlands portrayed a woman suffering from the disease in 2004 film The Notebook, directed by her son.

“It’s so crazy – we lived it, she acted it, and now it’s on us,” Mr Cassavetes told Entertainment Weekly.

Rowlands was known for playing strong, troubled women, and was often directed by her husband, John Cassavetes.

Operating outside the studio system, the couple created portraits of working-class strivers in movies including A Woman Under the Influence, Gloria, and Faces.

They made 10 films together across four decades, including Minnie and Moskowitz in 1971, Opening Night in 1977, and Love Streams in 1984.

Rowlands earned Oscar nominations for two of them – A Woman Under the Influence, in which she portrayed a housewife struggling with mental illness, and Gloria, in which she played a woman who rescued and protected a young orphaned boy from mobsters.

In 2015, she was awarded an honorary Academy Award for her work and legacy in Hollywood.

“You know what’s wonderful about being an actress? You don’t just live one life,” she said. “You live many lives.”

Rowlands was born in Wisconsin in June 1930.

After college she moved to New York, where she studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and met her husband, a fellow student.

“I always wanted to be an actress; I read so much when I was little, and it revealed to me there were other things to be,” she told The New York Times in 2016.

“You can have a lot of fun and see a lot of things.”

She worked in regional theatre and TV before making her Broadway debut in Middle of the Night in 1956.

Her first film role in The High Cost of Loving arrived two years later, and brought comparisons with one of the great stars of the 1930s, Carole Lombard.

In addition to Nick, she and John Cassavetes had two daughters, Alexandra and Zoe, who went into acting.

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