Gena Rowlands, the award-winning actress known for her acclaimed roles in “A Woman Under the Influence,” “Gloria,” and “The Notebook,” has died at 94.
Rowlands’ son, film director Nick Cassavetes, revealed in June 2024 that his mother had been living with Alzheimer’s disease for five years.
Actress Gena Rowlands in a scene from the 1962 film “The Spiral Road.”
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A four-time Emmy winner and two-time Golden Globe winner, as well as the recipient of an Honorary Academy Award, Rowlands’ career in theater, film and television spanned nearly seven decades. She was perhaps best known for her film collaborations with her husband, the late actor and director John Cassavetes, and was twice nominated for an Academy Award for her starring roles in his films “A Woman Under the Influence” and “Gloria.”
Born in Cambria, Wisconsin, on June 19, 1930, Virginia Cathryn Rowlands studied drama in New York City and began her career with repertory theater companies. She made her Broadway debut in “The Seven Year Itch” in 1953 and toured with the production. She also starred opposite Edward G. Robinson in Oscar-winning “Network” screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky’s stage adaptation of his film “Middle of the Night.”
Actor John Cassavetes and actress Gena Rowlands talking at their house in 1964, at Los Angeles, California.
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Rowlands met John Cassavetes when they were both students at the American Academy for Dramatic Arts and they were married in 1954, only a few months after they met. She spent the next six years working steadily in television, including opposite Cassavetes in the detective series “Johnny Staccato,” in which he starred, as well as appearing in hit series including “Bonanza,” “The Virginian,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “77 Sunset Strip,” and “Peyton Place.”
Gena Rowlands made her film debut in 1958 in “The High Cost of Living.” Five years and five films later, she starred in her first movie directed by John Cassavetes: 1963’s “A Child Is Waiting,” opposite Judy Garland and Burt Lancaster. The couple continued their collaboration with nine subsequent films over the next ten years, including the Oscar-nominated, influential 1968 drama “Faces.”
One of Rowlands’ most acclaimed roles was in the 1974 drama “A Woman Under the Influence,” which Cassavetes both wrote and directed as a showcase for her, and mortgaged their home to finance it when no studio would touch it. The film, about the mental and emotional unraveling of a middle-aged, blue-collar housewife, earned Rowlands a best actress Golden Globe win and Academy Award nomination. She received a second best actress Oscar nod for her 1980 title role in the crime thriller “Gloria,” also written and directed by Cassavetes, playing a woman who goes on the run with the young son of a mob bookkeeper to protect him, and an incriminating ledger of mob accounts.
Peter Falk, as Nick Longhetti, and Gena Rowlands as Mabel Longhetti, in “A Woman Under The Influence.”
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The last film Rowlands and Cassavetes made together was the critically-acclaimed but little-seen 1984 drama “Love Streams,” in which Cassavetes also co-starred. It was also his penultimate film before he died of alcoholism-related illness in 1989.
Outside of her work with Cassavetes, Rowlands won praise for her role in Woody Allen’s 1988 drama “Another Woman,” and for playing former first lady Betty Ford in the 1987 TV movie “The Betty Ford Story,” the latter of which won Rowlands a Golden Globe and Emmy award.
Rowlands worked steadily in both film and television throughout the 1990s and 2000s, including roles in the Sandra Bullock romantic drama “Hope Floats,” and the 1998 all-star comedy-drama “Playing by Heart,” opposite Sean Connery. She also appeared on television in the groundbreaking 1985 TV movie drama “An Early Frost,” one of the first films to confront the stigma attached to AIDS, and won an Emmy for her role in the 2002 TV movie drama “Hysterical Blindness,” opposite Uma Thurman.
James Garner and Gena Rowlands during “The Notebook” Los Angeles Premiere at Mann Village Theatre in Westwood, California.
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Arguably Rowland’s best-known, and most beloved, later big-screen role was in the 2004 romantic drama “The Notebook,” directed by her son, Nick Cassavetes. Rowlands portrayed the elderly version of the character played by Rachel McAdams, opposite James Garner’s role as her husband, played as a younger man by Ryan Gosling. Through reviews were mixed, the film was a box office smash, earning over $118 million globally, more than four times its production budget, and introducing Rowlands to a new, far younger generation of fans.
Nick Cassavetes directed his mother in three other films – “Unhook the Stars,” “She’s So Lovely” and “Yellow” – while Rowlands’ daughter, Zoe, directed her in 2007’s “Broken English.” Later in her career, Rowlands also made guest appearances in hit TV shows including “Numb3rs,” “Monk” and “NCIS.”
Rowlands’ last credited acting role was in the 2014 comedy-drama “Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks,” one year before she was presented with an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of her long career in film.
Actress Gena Rowlands attends the 88th Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood & Highland Center on February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California.
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“You know what’s wonderful about being an actress,” Rowlands said in her Academy Award acceptance speech, “is that you don’t just live one life – yours – you live many lives.”
In addition to her Academy Award, Rowlands was nominated twice for an Oscar, for “A Woman Under the Influence” and “Gloria.” She also was nominated for eight Golden Globe Awards, winning two, and won three Primetime Emmy Awards out of eight nominations, as well as a Daytime Emmy and many other critics’ awards.
Rowlands was married once, to John Cassavetes. She is survived by their three children: director Nick Cassavetes, and daughters Alexandra and Zoe, both of whom are actor/directors.
ABC News’ Christopher Watson contributed to this report.