Actress Gena Rowlands, whose fearless performance in “A Woman Under the Influence” inspired a generation and who starred in several John Cassavetes films as well as the romantic comedy “The Notebook,” died Wednesday at her home in Indian Wells, California, at the age of 94.
Her son's publicist's office confirmed her death. In June, Nick Cassavetes, who directed “The Notebook,” announced that the three-time Emmy-winning and two-time Oscar-nominated actress had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
The actress received her first two Academy Award nominations for her role in the 1974 film A Woman Under the Influence, written for her and directed by her husband John Cassavetes, in which she played Mabel Longetti. The other nomination was for Gloria (1980), also directed by her husband. In November 2015, she received an Honorary Academy Award at the annual Governors Awards in recognition of her distinguished career.
“Working this long? I didn’t even imagine I would live this long,” she admitted. diverse Before the event, there was the instantly familiar, guttural laughter from “A Woman Under the Influence,” as well as “Faces,” “Opening Night” and other Cassavetes-directed dramas.
After her husband's death in 1989, Rowlands continued to work as an actress, especially for her children who became actors and directors. She played roles in her son Nick's directorial debut, Unhook the Stars (1996), his hit films The Notebook (2004) and Yellow (2012), as well as a role in her daughter Zoe's Broken English (2007). She also led Terence Davies' 1940s Georgia drama The Neon Bible.
Early in her career, she made the transition from naive to major actress with ease. In an early interview, she said in her acceptance speech at the Governors Awards, “A lot of women, when they can't keep up with the young romantic roles, they don't want to think about the character roles and they stop sooner. But I just looked at the scripts and saw what I wanted to do, and I never worried about it.”
In a 1975 review of A Woman Under the Influence for the Boston Phoenix, film critic Janet Maslin said, “I don't know of another actress who has the physical and emotional resilience to pull off Mabel's temper the way Rowlands does,” and called the actress's breakdown scene “as terrifyingly authentic as anything she or Cassavetes have ever done before.”
Gena Rowlands on the set of “Gloria”, 1980
©Columbia Pictures/Courtesy of Everett Collection
Rowlands' final film credits came in two 2014 films: the science fiction comedy Parts Per Billion with Frank Langella, and an adaptation of the play Dance for Six Weeks with Joshua Jackson.
On the occasion of Rowlands' hand and foot print ceremony at the Chinese Theatre in December 2014, diverse “No one is known for his ability to dissect the horror of mental breakdown,” he wrote of the actress.
Rowlands made her film debut in 1958 opposite José Ferrer in the light romantic comedy The High Cost of Love. She played a strong mother opposite Kirk Douglas in Alone Are the Brave (1962), but began to explore the core of the neurotic roles that would come as the troubled mother of a mentally disabled son in Cassavetes's A Child Waits (1963).
Rowlands collaborated with Cassavetes on 10 films, including Faces (1968), Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), Opening Night (1977), and Love Streams (1984). Although she also worked with other noted directors—Paul Mazursky (“The Tempest”), Paul Schrader (“Daylight”), and Woody Allen (“Another Woman”)—her work with Cassavetes defined American independent cinema in the 1970s and 1980s.
Cassavetes reportedly had to force Rowlands, who was a largely reluctant star, to take on his roles, and the director did not ease up on his demands even when his wife, who played a prostitute in Faces, was pregnant with their second child during filming.
But, like her husband, Rowlands worked in popular films in order to finance her own films, appearing, for example, in “Two Minutes Warning” and, earlier, with Cassavetes and Peter Falk, in the 1968 Italian-made film “Machine Gun McCain.”
Rowlands also had a successful career in television, receiving eight Emmy Award nominations and winning three: in 1987 as lead actress on ABC's The Betty Ford Story; in 1992, as lead actress on CBS's Strange Face; and in 2003, as supporting actress on HBO's Hysterical Blindness.
Rowlands won a Daytime Emmy Award in 2004 for her role on the Showtime series The Amazing Mrs. Ritchie. She played the estranged daughter of her on-screen idol, Bette Davis, in the 1979 CBS film The Outsiders: A Mother and Daughter Story. In the 1985 NBC film Early Frost, Rowlands played a mother whose son discovers he has AIDS. The film was the first major film drama about the HIV/AIDS crisis.
Gena Rowlands with her son, director Nick Cassavetes, on the set of “The Notebook,” 2004.
©New Line Cinema/Courtesy of Everett Collection
Virginia Catherine Rowlands was born in Madison, Wisconsin. Rowlands attended the University of Wisconsin, then left for New York to study drama at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She married fellow actor John Cassavetes, who had been impressed by her work in a production there, a few months after they met in 1954.
Rowlands worked in television during the 1950s, making his debut in an episode of Top Secret in 1954, and appearing in serial anthology shows such as Studio One in Hollywood and The Steel Hour in the United States.
In 1952, Rowlands made her Broadway debut in The Seven Year Itch, and in 1956, she starred on stage opposite Edward G. Robinson in Paddy Chayefsky's Midnight.
Rowlands wrote the screenplay and co-starred with Ben Gazzara—a longtime collaborator from the Cassavetes days—in “Quartier Latin,” a short film included in the 2006 film “Paris, je t'aime.” In recent years she has also worked in television, making guest appearances on “Monk” in 2009 (for which she received an Emmy nomination) and “NCIS” in 2010.
Rowlands is survived by her children Nick, Zoe and Alexandra (Zan), several grandchildren, and her second husband Robert Forrest. The two married in 2012.
