American actress Gena Rowlands, whose six-decade career brought Oscar nominations and other accolades, died on Wednesday at the age of 94.
No official cause of death was immediately given, but her son, Nick Cassavetes, said earlier this year that she had been battling Alzheimer’s disease for five years.
The Oscar-nominated artist brought her deep range of emotions and expression to a number of original and poignant films that are considered classics of American independent cinema, most of which were filmed by her late husband, John Cassavetes.
For three decades, beginning in the 1960s, the couple formed a captivating and explosive on-screen partnership, exploring themes of passion and self-destruction against a backdrop of alcoholism and infidelity.
In what many consider her best role, she portrayed the condition of mental illness so convincingly in the 1974 film “A Woman Under the Influence,” for which she received the first of two Oscar nominations.
“Incapable of a surreal moment,” Woody Allen said of the actress he cast in his 1988 film “Another Woman.”
“Nothing I say about Gena is enough, because she’s incredible,” said Winona Ryder, quoted in the L.A. Times in 1992 when the two co-starred in Jim Jarmusch’s “Night on Earth.”
“There is a nobility, strength and excellence in her work that no one can match, and she is so graceful that you are left in awe at the way she moves.”
From her earliest work, Rowlands’ blonde hair was styled in a wavy bob, a striking on-screen beauty, and her performances exuded sadness and vulnerability.
But she always challenged the idea of women as objects of lust in her performances, and she also matured during Monroe’s struggles, culminating in her suicide in 1962.
“She can just play. Give her anything and she’ll always be creative. She doesn’t try to do anything different, that’s just the way she is,” Cassavetes said in a 2001 interview collection.
“Jenna is so dedicated and pure. She doesn’t care if it’s cinematic or not, she doesn’t care where the camera is, she doesn’t care if she looks good or not, she doesn’t care about anything except that you believe her.”
Rowlands was born into a cultured middle-class family in Cambria, Wisconsin, on June 19, 1930. Her father was a state senator and her mother was a painter and sometime actress.
She enrolled at New York’s American Academy of Drama and met Cassavetes, a dashing and vivacious Greek-American, in 1953. They were married a year later.
It was their collaboration that allowed him to produce extraordinary performances, the most prominent of which was “A Woman Under the Influence,” which also earned Cassavetes an Oscar nomination as director.
Rowlands gives a superb performance as housewife Mabel, who is driven to madness after years of quiet, uncomplicated dominance by her hard-working and taciturn husband (played by Peter Falk).
In a rare moment of defiance, and one of Rowlands’ most memorable scenes, Mabel strikes back, standing up at the table after eating spaghetti with friends and family, and begging them all to stand up for her for once.
The room falls silent, and soon Mabel is institutionalized. When she emerges, she is a mere shadow of her former, vibrant self.
In 2013, The New Yorker said the impact of the film and Rowlands’ performance “has since resonated throughout American cinema”, and cited Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee as two Hollywood figures influenced by Rowlands.
One of his final films with Cassavetes was the more outrageous “Gloria,” a 1980 gangster comedy about a woman fleeing the mob, wearing high heels, with a revolver in her hand and a young child by her side.
With evident delight, at times self-mocking and at times utterly convincing, Rowlands earned a second Oscar nomination and the film was awarded the top prize at the Venice Film Festival.
In 1989, Cassavetes died of liver failure due to years of drinking. Rowlands continued to make films and also worked in television, winning four Emmy Awards.
She and Cassavetes have three children, all of whom have pursued careers in film and television. Her son Nick directed her in “The Notebook” with Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams in 2004.
In 2012, she married her second husband, retired businessman Robert Forrest, and was awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 2015, the same year she retired from acting.
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