American actress Gena Rowlands, star of The Notebook, dies at 94

 

Gena Rowlands, the acclaimed American actress, a three-time Emmy winner and Oscar nominee for her vivid portrayals of strong, troubled women in the crime dramas Gloria and A Woman Under the Influence, has died at the age of 94.

Rowlands, whose death was reported Wednesday by Entertainment Weekly, citing her son Nick Cassevetes, starred in dozens of films during a career that began on stage and television in the 1950s and included award-winning roles in films directed by her first husband, actor, writer and director John Cassavetes.

Nick Cassavetes revealed in June that Rowlands had Alzheimer’s disease, like her mother and the character she played in the 2004 film The Notebook.

“She’s in full-blown dementia. And it’s so crazy: We’ve lived it, she’s acted it, and now it’s our turn,” her son, who directed the film, told Entertainment Weekly.

Rowlands and Cassavetes were the golden couple of independent cinema in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. Cassavetes was a pioneer of cinema verite, a technique that aimed to capture natural reactions and events, and Rowlands was his muse.

“Independent cinema existed before Cassavetes, but Cassavetes, working with Rowlands, succeeded in making an independent cinema that borrowed from Hollywood, not in plots or styles, but in the charm of the actors and the dramatic power,” The New Yorker said in 2016.

The tall, blonde actress made 10 films with Cassavetes before his death in 1989, including the psychological drama Opening Night (1977), the marital saga Faces (1968) and 1984’s Love Streams, in which she played his sister.

“There was always a manic energy in the performances she gave in her late husband’s films, a fear of failure, a desire to love,” the Golden Derby awards website said of Rowlands.

In A Woman Under the Influence, which Cassavetes originally wrote as a play and is considered among his finest performances, Rowlands played Mabel Longhetti, a housewife struggling with mental illness.

As the tenacious and determined protagonist of Cassavetes’ 1980 film Gloria, she saved and protected a young orphan from some mobsters determined to kill him.

Although she did not win an Oscar for either role, Rowlands did receive an honorary Academy Award in 2015.

I’ve always wanted to act
Virginia Cathryn “Gena”

Rowlands was born on June 19, 1930, in Cambria, Wisconsin. Her father was a banker and politician, and her mother was an actress.

After college, he moved to New York, where he studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and met fellow student Cassavetes.

“I always wanted to be an actress; I read so much when I was little, and it told me that there were other things to do. You can live so many lives, have so much fun, and see so many things,” she told The New York Times in 2016.

Rowlands worked in regional theater and on TV before making her Broadway debut in Middle of the Night in 1956. Two years later she landed her first film role in The High Cost of Loving and appeared in Cassavetes’ directorial debut Shadows.

“It wasn’t like working for someone else,” she told film critic Roger Ebert of her husband in 2016. “The freedom that John gave his actors was astonishing.”

Rowlands continued to work in films, including Woody Allen’s 1988 drama Another Woman, and on television after Cassavetes’ death.

She won an Emmy for Best Actress for The Betty Ford Story (1987) and the drama Face of a Stranger (1992), and took home the award for Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for Hysterical Blindness (2002).

The indie film icon found a new audience when she returned to the big screen in 2004 as the adult version of Rachel McAdams’ character in The Notebook.

Rowlands was married to Cassavetes from 1954 until his death. They had three children. In 2012, she married businessman Robert Forrest.

“It’s a tough life, but it’s been so exciting and wonderful because you’re doing what you really want to do,” she said of acting and making independent films.

Actress Gena Rowlands poses for a portrait at the London West Hollywood Hotel in West Hollywood

Source: Press agencies

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