Hollywood legend Gena Rowlands dies at the age of 94
Gena Rowlands, one of Hollywood’s legendary actresses, has died at the age of 94. The actress from “The Notebook” died in her home in Indian Wells, California.
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Gena Rowlands, one of the last living Hollywood legends, has died at the age of 94.
A representative for her son, director Nick Cassavetes, confirmed Rowlands’ death to USA TODAY on Wednesday. No further details were released.
TMZ was the first to report the news. According to TMZ, Rowlands died surrounded by family at her home in Indian Wells, California.
She is survived by her children Nick, Alexandra and Zoe Cassavetes, both actors and directors. Rowlands was married for decades to the late director and independent film pioneer John Cassavetes.
In June, Nick told Entertainment Weekly that his mother was suffering from dementia, much like her character in the 2004 drama The Notebook. Rowland played an older version of Rachel McAdams’ character Allie in the popular romantic film, which also starred Ryan Gosling.
“I brought my mom in to play the older Allie, and we spent a lot of time talking about Alzheimer’s and wanted to be authentic about it, and now she’s had Alzheimer’s for five years,” Cassavetes told Entertainment Weekly. “She’s fully demented.”
“It’s so crazy,” he added. “We lived it, she played it, and now it’s up to us.”
Rowlands received Golden Globe, Emmy Awards and an Honorary Oscar
Over the course of her 50-year career, Rowlands appeared in more than 40 films and even more television series. Her most famous role was in The Influence (1974), directed by Cassavetes, as a manic housewife who is institutionalized.
For her performance, Rowlands won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress (she lost at the Academy Awards to Ellen Burstyn in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore).
She starred in ten films for John Cassavetes, with whom she was together from their marriage in 1954 until his death in 1989.
Rowlands won two Golden Globes, the other for her leading role in the 1987 television movie “The Betty Ford Story” about the former first lady. Her television work also earned her a total of four Emmy Awards for her work in various miniseries and films.
The actress has been nominated for an Oscar twice, the second time for 1980’s “Gloria,” a neo-noir thriller also directed by Cassavetes. In 2015, Rowlands received an honorary Oscar. In her speech, she thanked her late husband and her chosen profession for a fulfilling life.
“The wonderful thing about being an actress is that you don’t just live one life, you live many lives,” she told the crowd.
“For that,” she continued, in a speech that still resonates today in light of the recent strikes by Hollywood screenwriters and actors, “we have to thank the screenwriters, because they are the ones who start with a blank sheet of paper and create the story and the characters, and that hopefully gives us actors the opportunity to bring all those characters to life.”
Rowland’s career spanned Broadway, film and television
Rowlands grew up in Cambria, Wisconsin, the daughter of a housewife and actress and a politician. As a child, she was an avid reader.
In a short film she made for the Academy in 2015 called “What Acting Means to Me,” Rowlands said, “Acting is a lot like reading a book, and as I was reading, I realized that as an actor, you can be many people and many things, and that sparked my curiosity.”
Although the family moved first to Washington, D.C. and later to Minneapolis due to her father’s political office, Rowlands returned to her home state as a young adult and attended the University of Wisconsin.
After graduating, Rowlands headed to Broadway and spent the next decade honing her craft in a range of productions, from The Seven Year Itch to The Middle of the Night. She also found work in the emerging medium of television, starring in everything from Westerns to crime dramas.
Rowlands’ Cassavetes film career began in 1963 with “A Child is Waiting” and ended in 1984 with “Love Streams.” The couple often took on more prominent roles so they could channel their earnings into her husband’s independent films.
“It was impossible to raise money outside the studio,” she told the Guardian in an interview in 2001. “We financed all the films completely ourselves, with the exception of ‘A Woman Under the Influence,’ where Peter Falk and his wife paid half.”
“After John wrote the script, everyone said, ‘Why would anyone want to see a movie about a crazy middle-aged lady?'” she said. “But we were luckier than a lot of young directors today because we were both established actors and when we ran out of money, which we did all the time, we stopped and each made a movie.”
After Cassavetes’ death, Rowlands continued to act and occasionally received acclaim for her roles. In 2002, she won another Emmy Award for her role in Mira Nair’s Hysterical Blindness, and in 2004 she appeared in The Notebook, directed by her son Nick.
In 2007, Rowlands starred alongside Parker Posey in Broken English, a film written and directed by Rowlands’ daughter Zoe.
Over the next few years, she appeared in episodes of television series such as “Monk” and “NCIS” and finally retired from the profession in 2015. She has been married to retired businessman Robert Forrest since 2012.
Rowlands paid tribute to idol Bette Davis in honorary Oscar speech
Rowlands was particularly fond of her idol, actress Bette Davis, with whom she worked in the 1979 film “Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter,” in which Rowlands, then almost 50 years old, played Davis’ daughter.
In her Oscar acceptance speech, Rowlands recalled an incident during production when she and Davis watched clips from a film that had been shot the day before.
When the lights came up, Rowlands was pleased with her performance, but Davis seemed angry and pointed her finger at the cameraman. It turns out the Hollywood legend wasn’t happy with how orange her lips looked in the film.
Davis suddenly called Rowlands over and asked if she had noticed the same thing, and Rowlands evaded the question by simply saying that she had not been paying close enough attention to notice.
“And Bette looked at me and said, ‘Well, you haven’t been paying attention? Then you better start paying attention, because I’ll tell you what: You’re not a young whippersnapper yourself anymore,'” Rowlands said to laughter.
Starring: Brendan Morrow, Patrick Ryan and KiMi Robinson
