Gena Rowlands, the irreproachable and Oscar-nominated star of cinematic classics like A Woman Under the Influence, Opening Night, Night on Earth, and The Notebook, died on Wednesday at her home in Indian Wells, California. She was 94.
A cause of death was not immediately shared. Rowlands was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2019, her family said earlier this year.
TMZ first reported Rowlands’ death on Wednesday night. A representative for her son, Nick Cassavetes, soon after confirmed the tabloid’s report to Variety and The Washington Post.
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A four-time Emmy winner and two-time Oscar nominee, Rowlands was best-known for her onscreen collaborations with her husband, the actor and director John Cassavetes. As his muse, Rowlands starred in 10 of his films before his 1989 death, including 1974’s A Woman Under the Influence.
Her chimeric, ricocheting performance as Mabel Longhetti, a manic-depressive housewife to Peter Falk’s roughshod construction worker, was met with universal acclaim.
In Rowlands’ hands, The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael wrote, “Mabel fragments before our eyes: a three-ring circus might be taking place in her face. Rowlands’ performance is enough for half a dozen tours de force, a whole row of Oscars—it’s exhausting. Conceivably, she’s a great actress, but nothing she does is memorable, because she does so much.
“It’s the most transient big performance I’ve ever seen.”
Falk sang Rowlands’ praises directly to her in an interview filmed years later for a Criterion Collection DVD release.
“That is the most compelling, unexpected, unpredictable 10 minutes of film I’ve ever seen,” he said, referring to Mabel’s infamous breakdown scene.
“I’ve never seen acting like that, honest to God. I’ll never forget it… You’re gonna watch that scene, and this lady here is gonna getcha. I don’t care—100 years from now—it will always be powerful.”
The low-budget movie netted Rowlands a Best Actress nomination and Cassavetes a Best Director nod. (They lost to Ellen Burstyn in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather: Part II, respectively.)
Her other Oscar nomination stemmed from 1980’s Gloria, another Cassavetes project, this one a crime thriller in which she played the peevish ex-girlfriend of a gangster who defends a young boy from the mobsters hunting him.
In 2004, she starred in The Notebook, a romantic drama directed by her son, Nick. It was Nick who disclosed his mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis over the summer.
“I got my mom to play older Allie, and we spent a lot of time talking about Alzheimer’s and wanting to be authentic with it, and now, for the last five years, she’s had Alzheimer’s,” he told Entertainment Weekly.
“She’s in full dementia. And it’s so crazy—we lived it, she acted it and now it’s on us.”
Rowlands was given an honorary Oscar in 2015. “What’s wonderful about being an actress is you don’t just live one life—yours—you live many lives,” she said in her acceptance speech.
Besides Nick, Rowlands is survived by her husband, Robert Forrest, and two daughters, Alexandra and Zoe Cassavetes.
