GENA ROWLANDS (1930 - 2024)

Gena Rowlands, an actress best known for her brilliant and unique screen performances, many of her most notable are in collaboration with her actor/director husband, John Cassavetes, has passed away on August 14th at the age of ninety-four. No specific cause of death has been given but she had been struggling with Alzheimer's disease for the last five years.

She was born Virginia Rowlands in Cambria, Wisconsin, one of two children to Wisconsin State Senator, Edwin Myrwyn Rowlands and Mary Allen Neal who later became an actress known as Lady Rowlands. After college, Rowlands went to New York to study acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She began her professional career performing in repertory theatre companies before making her Broadway debut in "The Seven Year Itch" as a replacement cast member and later toured in a national production of the play. She went on to do several live television programs and made guest-starring roles in many drama and western series. Rowlands made her film debut in 1958 with "The High Cost of Loving", co-starring with Jose Ferrer who also directed the film. But it would be her work with Cassavetes, whom she married in 1954, that would give her a greater opportunity to display all she could do as an actor.

While she had a supporting role in the 1963 Hollywood feature that he directed, "A Child Is Waiting" with Judy Garland and Burt Lancaster, it was six years later with "Faces", a cinéma vérité-styled drama that was entirely self-financed by the couple, when she and Cassavetes began to receive widespread critical acclaim for their work. The film about the final stages of the marriage between a middle-aged couple went on to receive three Academy Award nominations including Best Original Screenplay for Cassavetes. She would make ten films together with her husband who helped guide his wife to some of her most memorable roles. Her two Oscar nominations came from films directed by Cassavetes; "A Woman Under The Influence" in 1974 about a woman's strange behavior creating conflict with her spouse (Peter Falk) and "Gloria" from 1980 where she plays a gangster's former girlfriend who tries to protect a young boy (John Adames) being hunted by the mob for information. Rowlands went on to receive an Honorary Academy Award in 2015.

Some highlights of her later screen performances includes "An Early Frost", a 1985 made-for-TV movie that was one of the first to deal with the subject of AIDS. She played the former First Lady, Betty Ford in the 1987 television film, "The Betty Ford Story" where she won her first Emmy Award. Rowlands made appearances in the movies, "The Brink's Job", "Another Woman", "Something to Talk About", "Hope Floats", the drama, "Unhook The Stars" from 1996 and the 2004 romantic drama based on the best-selling novel, "The Notebook" both directed by her son Nick Cassavetes.

Rowlands is survived by her three children with Cassavetes (who passed away in 1989); Nick, Alexandra and Zoe who all have followed their parents to have careers in the performing arts and filmmaking.