Gena Rowlands in ‘Gloria.’ Photo: Columbia Pictures.
Preview:
- Gena Rowlands has died at the age of 94.
- She became known for her work with her husband, John Cassavetes.
- Younger audiences fell in love with her via 2004 weepie ‘The Notebook’.
Gena Rowlands, an Oscar-nominated actor whose emotional and impactful performances won her Oscar nominations and Emmy Awards, has died. She was 94.
Rowlands appeared on TV, stage and in movies, and became known for a variety of wonderful roles in an eclectic range of projects.
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Gena Rowlands: Early Life
(L to R) Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands in ‘A Woman Under the Influence.’ Photo: Faces International Films.
Gena Rowlands was born on June 19th, 1930, in Madison, Wisconsin to banker father Edwin Myrwyn Rowlands and actress mother Mary Allen Neal.
Rowlands attended the University of Wisconsin and then opted to move to New York to study acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. There she met a fellow acting student, John Cassavetes and they married in 1954, which sparked a long professional career (more on that below) as well as a personal one. The pair were married until Cassavetes’ death in 1989.
Gena Rowlands: TV work
(L to R) Aidan Quinn and Gena Rowlands in ‘An Early Frost’. Photo: NBC.
Rowlands made her television debut in 1954 in ‘Middle of the Night’. That launched a long-running TV career that ran parallel with her movie work. She had a regular role on ‘Peyton Place‘ and earned the first of eight Emmy Award nominations for her poignant characterization of a mother facing the dual revelation that her son is a homosexual and that he is dying from AIDS in 1985’s ‘An Early Frost’.
She scored her first Emmy win for ‘The Betty Ford Story’ playing the former first lady. She captured another best actress Emmy for ‘Face of a Stranger’ and a best supporting actress trophy for ‘Hysterical Blindness.’
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Gena Rowlands: Notable Movie Roles
(L to R) James Garner and Gena Rowlands in ‘The Notebook’. Photo: New Line Cinema.
Rowland’s first movie role was in the comedy ‘The High Cost of Loving’ in 1958. She had a bit part in Cassavetes’s ‘Shadows’ before appearing in the western ‘Lonely Are the Brave’.
Although she worked with various directors over the next two decades, most of her films during that time were directed by Cassavetes. The duo had arguably their greatest success with ‘A Woman Under the Influence’ in in which she starred as a woman struggling to reintegrate with her family after having been hospitalized for a mental breakdown, and the mob drama ‘Gloria’ in 1980. Rowlands received Academy Award nominations for both roles.
The couple’s other acclaimed collaborations included ‘Faces’, ‘Machine Gun McCain’, ‘Minnie and Moskowitz’, ‘Two-Minute Warning’, ‘Opening Night’, ‘Tempest’, and ‘Love Streams’, in which she played opposite her husband as his sister). Other films included ‘The Spiral Road’, Woody Allen’s ‘Another Woman’, ‘Something to Talk About’, ‘Hope Floats’, ‘The Skeleton Key‘, ‘Broken English’ and ‘Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks’.
In more recent years, Rowlands won over a whole new audience playing an aging woman suffering from Alzheimer’s in the 2004 romantic drama ‘The Notebook’. In 2015, she received an honorary Academy Award.
Rowlands is survived by her second husband, Robert, daughters Alexandra and Zoe, and filmmaker son Nick, who directed her in ‘The Notebook’.
At the time of writing, Rowlands’ cause of death was not announced, but she had been battling Alzheimer’s, her condition confirmed by Nick back in June.
Gena Rowlands in ‘Gloria.’ Photo: Columbia Pictures.