Actor Gena Rowlands.
| Photo Credit: AP
Gena Rowlands, hailed as one of the greatest actors to ever practice the craft and a guiding light in independent cinema as a star in groundbreaking movies by her director husband, John Cassavetes, and who later charmed audiences in her son’s tear-jerker The Notebook, has died. She was 94.
Rowlands’ death was confirmed on Wednesday by representatives for her son, filmmaker Nick Cassavetes. He revealed earlier this year that his mother had Alzheimer’s disease. TMZ reported that Rowlands died Wednesday at her home in Indian Wells, California.
Operating outside the studio system, the husband-and-wife team of John Cassavetes and Rowlands created indelible portraits of working-class strivers and small-timers in such films as A Woman Under the Influence, Gloria and Faces.
Rowlands made 10 films across four decades with Cassavetes, including Minnie and Moskowitz in 1971, Opening Night in 1977 and Love Streams in 1984.
She earned two Oscar nods for two of them: 1974’s “A Woman Under the Influence,” in which she played a wife and mother cracking under the burden of domestic harmony, and “Gloria” in 1980, about a woman who helps a young boy escape the mob.
“He had a particular sympathetic interest in women and their problems in society, how they were treated and how they solved and overcame what they needed to, so all his movies have some interesting women, and you don’t need many,” she told the AP in 2015.
In addition to the Oscar nominations, Rowlands earned three Primetime Emmy Awards, one Daytime Emmy and two Golden Globes. She was awarded an honorary Academy Award in 2015 in recognition of her work and legacy in Hollywood. “You know what’s wonderful about being an actress? You don’t just live one life,” she said at the podium. “You live many lives.”
A new generation was introduced to Rowlands in her son’s blockbuster The Notebook, in which she played a woman whose memory is ravaged, looking back on a romance for the ages. Her younger self was portrayed by Rachel McAdams. (She also appeared in Nick Cassavetes’ Unhook the Stars in 1996.).
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John Cassavetes died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1989, and Rowlands returned to acting to assuage her grief. Between assignments she sometimes attended film festivals and societies for Cassavetes screenings.
“I want everyone to see his films,” she said at the San Sebastian Festival in 1992. “John was one of a kind, the most totally fearless person I’ve ever known. He had a very specific view of life and the individuality of people.”
