Actress Gena Rowlands of The Notebook passes away at age 94
At 94, Gena Rowlands, the Oscar-nominated actress best known for her stirring performances in movies helmed by her first husband, John Cassavetes, passed yesterday. Nick Cassavetes, her son, made her passing public on Wednesday. Nick disclosed that Rowlands had been afflicted with Alzheimer’s in 2024.
Rowlands had a prosperous acting career prior to and following her partnerships with Cassavetes, but it was their teamwork that constituted her legacy. They collaborated to create a number of avant-garde movies in which Rowlands portrayed nuanced, passionate, complicated women. Faces (1968), Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), Opening Night (1977), Gloria (1980), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), and Love Streams (1984) were some of these movies. Her performances in these movies were audacious and uncommon in American cinema, bringing to light the unfiltered emotional complexity of characters that were frequently disregarded. “It was considered embarrassing for an older woman to have anything to say about anything emotional,” Rowlands stated in a 2001 interview with The Guardian.
Born in 1930 in Madison, Wisconsin, Rowlands began her acting career at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, when in 1953 she had her audition and met Cassavetes. After getting married in less than a year, they started lucrative careers as theater and movie stars. Rowlands made her Broadway debut in Paddy Chayefsky’s Middle of the Night in 1956, playing alongside Edward G. Robinson. She also had television guest appearances, such as in Johnny Staccato, a police drama starring Cassavetes.
Cassavetes’ passion for filmmaking reached its zenith with the 1958 new wave classic Shadows. While Rowlands was absent from Shadows, she had a minor part in his third film as director, A Child Is Waiting (1963). Following a disagreement with Hollywood producer Stanley Kramer, Rowlands and Cassavetes made the decision to pursue their own projects. Their big break came in 1968 when Rowlands starred as a sex worker caught up in a disillusioned husband’s failing marriage in the film Faces.
The pair carried on working together on a series of movies that delves into the depths of human feeling. Rowlands played an eccentric suitor who helped an art gallery director who was healing after a breakup in Minnie and Moskowitz (1971). She was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress in 1974 for her portrayal of a married lady on the verge of a breakdown in A lady Under the Influence. She kept delving deeper into nuanced roles, such as the mentally ill theater actress in Opening Night (1977) and the girlfriend of a former mobster in Gloria (1980), which earned her a second Oscar nomination. In Love Streams (1984), her last film project with Cassavetes, she portrayed the sister of the actor’s alcoholic character.
While Cassavetes’ health deteriorated, Rowlands continued to work on television, where she received praise from critics for her roles in dramas such as The Betty Ford Story and Thursday’s Child. She has experimented with a variety of parts in film, such as those of a crisis-ridden philosophy professor in Woody Allen’s 1988 film Another Woman, a taxi rider in Jim Jarmusch’s 1991 film Night on Earth*, and Aunt Mae in Terence Davies’s 1995 version of The Neon Bible.
Rowlands has worked with her son Nick Cassavetes, making appearances in his films The Notebook (2004) and She’s So Lovely (1997). She also made an appearance in Broken English (2007), the directorial debut of her daughter Zoe Cassavetes.
Rowlands is survived by her second husband, Robert Forrest, whom she married in 2012, as well as her three children, Nick, Alexandra, and Zoe. She received an honorary Oscar in 2015 in recognition of her outstanding contributions to film.
