MN Woman Helped Oscar Nominee Julianne Moore Prepare For Role

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- A Minnesota woman hopes her coaching pays off for Julianne Moore, who is nominated for an Oscar for her performance in the film "Still Alice."

In the movie, Moore plays the role of a woman with early onset Alzheimer's disease. Moore reached out to Sandy Oltz, of Stearns County. Oltz also suffers from the disease.

"I started Skyping with her, and I as a redhead, we kind of had a connection to start with and we became good friends," Oltz said.

She admits she doesn't know much about Moore's work.

"I knew who she was. I'd seen her in magazines, and I always thought she was this gorgeous redhead, but I wasn't familiar with movies she had done in the past," she said.

She called it a bit surreal to get to know her, and called Moore a lovely lady.

Moore asked Oltz a lot of questions about what it was like, when she started not remembering.

"So when I saw the movie and she was jogging and got lost, I thought, 'That's what I told her to do,'" she said.

Oltz told WCCO Radio's Dave Lee about her own experience with the disease.

"Doctors thought it was stress, a stroke, a brain tumor. But in Stearns County, Minnesota, at 47 nobody thought it was Alzheimer's," she said.

Oltz went through many stages of grief but has finally turned the pain into advocacy working with others to deal with the disease.

Click here to find out more about the Alzheimer Association of Minnesota-North Dakota.