Gena Rowlands

Gena Rowlands was born Virginia Cathryn Rowlands on June 19, 1930, in Madison, Wisconsin. Her father, Edwin Myrwyn Rowlands, was a banker and state legislator of Welsh descent and a member of the Wisconsin Progressive Party. Her mother, Mary Allen Rowlands (née Neal), was a homemaker who later became an actress under the name Lady Rowlands. She had an elder brother, David. The family moved to Washington, D.C., in 1939, to Milwaukee in 1942, and later to Minneapolis as her father took government posts with the Department of Agriculture and the Office of Price Administration.

Rowlands attended the University of Wisconsin from 1947 to 1950, where she joined Kappa Kappa Gamma. She then moved to New York City to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts at Carnegie Hall, where she met her future husband, John Cassavetes.

She began in repertory theatre and at the Provincetown Playhouse, made her Broadway debut in The Seven Year Itch and starred opposite Edward G. Robinson in Middle of the Night (1956). Television kept her busy through the 1950s and 1960s, from Top Secret (1954 to 1955) and Johnny Staccato to Bonanza, The Virginian, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Peyton Place (1967). Her film debut was The High Cost of Loving (1958), followed by Lonely Are the Brave (1962) with Kirk Douglas.

With Cassavetes she made ten films, including Faces (1968), Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), Opening Night (1977), Gloria (1980) and Love Streams (1984). A Woman Under the Influence and Gloria brought her Academy Award nominations for Best Actress.

After Cassavetes's death she worked with Woody Allen (Another Woman, 1988), Jim Jarmusch (Night on Earth, 1991) and Mira Nair (Hysterical Blindness, 2002), played Betty Ford in The Betty Ford Story (1987), and starred in An Early Frost (1985), one of the first television films about AIDS. In 2004 she played the older Allie in The Notebook for her son Nick Cassavetes. Later credits include The Skeleton Key (2005), Paris, je t'aime (2006), Broken English (2007), and guest roles on Numb3rs, Monk and NCIS. Her final film was Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks (2014).

Rowlands married John Cassavetes on March 9, 1954. They were married until his death on February 3, 1989, and had three children, Nick, Alexandra and Zoe, all of whom became actors and directors. In 2012 she married retired businessman Robert Forrest. She grew up admiring Bette Davis and later played Davis's daughter in the 1979 television film Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter.

Rowlands credited writers as the true starting point of an actor's work, saying at the 2015 Governors Awards that they start with a blank piece of paper and create the characters actors bring to life. She spoke often of her gratitude to Cassavetes for writing her what she called magnificent parts, and once described herself as perhaps the luckiest actress who ever lived.

Rowlands is regarded as one of the defining actors of American independent film. Her work with Cassavetes, made largely outside the studio system, influenced generations of filmmakers and performers, and her Mabel Longhetti in A Woman Under the Influence is widely taught as a landmark of screen acting. In 2021 Richard Brody of The New Yorker called her the most important and original movie actor of the past half century. To many younger viewers she remains the older Allie of The Notebook.

Honorary Academy Award (2015). Academy Award nominations for Best Actress for A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and Gloria (1980). Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin International Film Festival for Opening Night (1977). Golden Globe wins for A Woman Under the Influence and The Betty Ford Story, among eight nominations. Primetime Emmy Awards for The Betty Ford Story (1987), Face of a Stranger (1992) and Hysterical Blindness (2003), and a Daytime Emmy for The Incredible Mrs. Ritchie (2004).

Her films with Cassavetes are kept in circulation by the Criterion Collection, which honoured her after her death with a selection of her performances. Turner Classic Movies celebrated her Honorary Oscar in 2016 and included her in TCM Remembers in 2024. The Notebook (2004) made her familiar to a new audience decades after her Cassavetes classics.

In June 2024 her son Nick Cassavetes said she had been living with Alzheimer's disease for the previous five years. Gena Rowlands died of complications of Alzheimer's disease at her home in Indian Wells, California, on August 14, 2024, aged 94. She was buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Tributes came from the Criterion Collection, TCM, the BFI and major news outlets.