Gena Rowlands, The Notebook and A Woman Under the Influence Star, Dies at 94

April 2024 · 7 minute read

Gena Rowlands, whose seminal and fearless performance in “A Woman Under the Influence” inspired a generation and who starred in many other John Cassavetes features as well as the romance “The Notebook,” died Wednesday at her home in Indian Wells, Calif. She was 94.

Her death was confirmed by the office of her son’s agent. In June, Nick Cassavetes, who directed his mother in “The Notebook,” shared that the three-time Emmy winner and two-time Oscar nominee had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

Rowlands’ role as Mabel Longhetti in the 1974 drama “A Woman Under the Influence,” written for her and directed by husband John Cassavetes, landed the actor the first of two Academy Award nominations. The other nom was for “Gloria” (1980), also directed by her husband. In November 2015, she was awarded an honorary Academy Award at the annual Governors Awards in recognition of her storied career.

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“Working this long? I didn’t even think I’d be living this long,” she confessed to Variety ahead of the event in the roaring, throaty laugh instantly familiar from “A Woman Under the Influence,” as well as “Faces,” “Opening Night” and other Cassavetes-directed drams.

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After her husband died in 1989, Rowlands continued working as an actor, especially for her own children who became actor-directors. She took roles in son Nick’s directorial debut, “Unhook the Stars” (1996), his hit film “The Notebook” (2004) and his 2012 effort “Yellow,” as well as a role in daughter Zoe’s “Broken English” (2007). She also led Terence Davies’ coming-of-age 1995 drama “The Neon Bible,” set in 1940’s Georgia.

Early in her career, she made a near-effortless transition from Broadway ingenue to grande dame. In an early interview. In her acceptance speech at the Governors Awards, she shared that “A lot of women, when they can’t keep doing young romantic roles, don’t want to consider character parts and quit sooner. But I just looked at the scripts and kept seeing what I’d like to do, and never worried about it.”

In a 1975 review of “A Woman Under the Influence” for the Boston Phoenix, film critic Janet Maslin said, “I don’t know of another actress who possesses the physical and emotional elasticity to skitter through Mabel’s moods the way Rowlands does,” calling the actor’s breakdown scene ”as blood-curdlingly authentic as anything she or Cassavetes has ever done.”

Rowlands final feature credits came in two 2014 films: sci-fi comedy “Parts Per Billion,” with Frank Langella, and an adaptation of the play “Dancing for Six Weeks” with Joshua Jackson.

On the occasion of Rowlands’ handprint and footprint ceremony at the Chinese Theater in December 2014, Variety wrote of the actress, “None is better known for anatomizing mental breakdown’s terror.”

Rowlands made her film debut in 1958 opposite Jose Ferrer in the light romantic comedy “The High Cost of Loving.” She played a sturdy earth mother-type opposite Kirk Douglas in “Lonely Are the Brave” (1962) but started to explore the neurotic core of roles to come as the troubled mother of a mentally handicapped son in “A Child Is Waiting” (1963), directed by Cassavetes.

Rowlands collaborated with Cassavetes on 10 films, including “Faces” (1968), “Minnie and Moskowitz” (1971), “Opening Night” (1977) and “Love Streams” (1984). Though she also worked with other name directors — Paul Mazursky (“Tempest”), Paul Schrader (“Light of Day”) and Woody Allen (“Another Woman”) — her work with Cassavetes defined the American independent cinema of the ’70s and ’80s.

Cassavetes reportedly had to drag performances out of Rowlands, who was largely a reluctant star. The director did not ease his demands even when his wife, playing a call girl in “Faces,” was pregnant with their second child during lensing of the film.

Like her husband, however, Rowlands took work in mainstream films in order to finance his films, appearing, for example, in “Two Minute Warning” and earlier, with Cassavetes and Peter Falk, in the Italian-made 1968 pic “Machine Gun McCain.”

Rowlands also enjoyed a successful career in television, drawing eight Emmy Awards nominations and winning three: In 1987 as lead actress in ABC’s “The Betty Ford Story”; in 1992, as lead actress in “Face of a Stranger” (CBS); and in 2003 as supporting actress in HBO’s “Hysterical Blindness.”

Rowlands also won a Daytime Emmy in 2004 as the title character in Showtime’s “The Incredible Mrs. Ritchie.” She played the estranged daughter of Bette Davis, one of her screen idols, in the 1979 CBS telepic “Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter.” And in the 1985 NBC telepic “An Early Frost,” Rowlands starred as a mother whose son discovers he has AIDS. It is regarded as the first major film drama about the HIV/AIDS crisis.

Virginia Cathryn Rowlands was born in Madison, Wisc. Rowlands attended the University of Wisconsin, eventually leaving for New York to study drama at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She married fellow actor John Cassavetes, who had admired her work in a production there, a few months after meeting him in 1954.

Rowlands worked in television during the 1950s, debuting in an episode of “Top Secret” in 1954 and appearing on episodic anthology shows such as “Studio One in Hollywood” and “The United States Steel Hour.”

In 1952, Rowlands made her Broadway debut in “The Seven Year Itch,” and in 1956 she starred onstage opposite Edward G. Robinson in Paddy Chayefsky’s “Middle of the Night.”

Rowlands scripted and starred with Ben Gazzara — a longtime collaborator from the Cassavetes days — in “Quartier Latin,” a short included in the 2006 omnibus film “Paris, je t’aime.” In recent years she also worked in television, guesting on “Monk” in 2009 (drawing an Emmy nom) and “NCIS” in 2010.

Rowlands is survived by her children, Nick, Zoe and Alexandra (Xan), a number of grandchildren and her second husband, Robert Forrest. The two married in 2012.

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