The Notebook star Gena Rowlands dies at 94 after Alzheimer’s diagnosis
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Actress Gena Rowlands, star of The Notebook, at the film's premiere in Los Angeles on June 21, 2004.
PHOTO: REUTERS
NEW YORK – American acclaimed actress Gena Rowlands, who starred in dozens of films directed by her first husband, Greek-American actor and director John Cassavetes, has died at the age of 94, Entertainment Weekly reported on Aug 14, citing her son, American actor and director Nick Cassavetes.
Rowlands, whose career began on stage and television in the 1950s, was a three-time Emmy winner and dual Oscar nominee for her vivid portrayals of strong, troubled women in the crime drama Gloria (1980) and A Woman Under The Influence (1974).
Nick Cassavetes revealed in late June that Rowlands had Alzheimer’s disease, like her own mother and the character she portrayed in the romantic film The Notebook (2004), which starred Canadian actor Ryan Gosling and actress Rachel McAdams.
“She’s in full dementia. And it’s so crazy – we lived it, she acted it, and now it’s on us,” her son, who directed the film, told Entertainment Weekly.
Rowlands and John Cassavetes were the golden couple of independent films in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. Cassavetes was a pioneer in cinema verite and Rowlands was his muse.
“Independent film-making existed before Cassavetes, but Cassavetes, working with Rowlands, managed to make an independent cinema that borrowed from Hollywood – not in plots or styles but in actorly allure and dramatic power,” The New Yorker said in 2016.
The tall, blonde actress made 10 films with Cassavetes before he died at age 59 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 to the performances she gave in her late husband’s films, a fear of failure, a desire to love,” the awards website Golden Derby said of Rowlands.
In A Woman Under The Influence, which Cassavetes originally wrote as a play and which is considered among her best performances, Rowlands played Mabel Longhetti, a housewife struggling with mental illness.
As the tough, determined title character in Cassavetes’ film Gloria, she rescued and protected a young, orphaned boy from mobsters determined to kill him.
“Rowlands’ sublime acting is almost unprecedentedly id-driven: her beleaguered heroines operate from such deep reserves of need that can only be accessed by Rowlands, who doesn’t just claim moments but wrestles with them in order to extract even tougher layers of authenticity,” critic Matthew Eng said on the Tribeca News website in 2016.
Although she did not win an Oscar for either role, Rowlands received an Honorary Academy Award in 2015.
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, she moved to New York, where she studied drama at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and met Cassavetes, a fellow student.
“I always wanted to be an actress; I read so much when I was little, and it revealed to me there were other things to be. You can live a lot of lives and have a lot of fun and see a lot of things,” she told The New York Times in 2016.
Rowlands worked in regional theatre and 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 (1958) and appeared in Cassavetes’ directorial debut film Shadows (1959).
“It was not like working for anybody else,” she told late American film critic Roger Ebert about her husband in 2016. “The freedom that John gave his actors was astounding.”
Rowlands continued to work in films, including American director Woody Allen’s 1988 drama Another Woman, and TV following Cassavetes’ death.
She won best actress Emmys for The Betty Ford Story (1987) and the drama Face Of A Stranger (1992) and took home a best supporting trophy in a miniseries or movie for Hysterical Blindness (2002).
Gena Rowlands (right) in a scene from The Notebook with late actor James Garner.
PHOTO: WBEI
The independent film icon found a new audience when she returned to the big screen in 2004 as the older version of McAdams’ character in The Notebook.
“It’s a tricky life, but it was so exciting and wonderful because you were doing what you really wanted do it,” she said about acting and making independent films.
Rowlands was married to Cassavetes from 1954 until his death in 1989. She wedded retired businessman Robert Forrest in 2012.
She had three children with Cassavetes – Nick, Alexandra and Zoe – who went on to be actors and directors. REUTERS
