Gena Rowlands, acclaimed groundbreaking actress, dies at 94

Gena Rowlands, the renowned actress who helped pioneer independent filmmaking alongside her husband John Cassavetes, has died at the age of 94.

The retired actress died Wednesday afternoon surrounded by her family at her home in Indian Wells, Calif., an agent for her son, director Nick Cassavetes, confirmed to Variety.

A cause of death was not given, though Rowlands had been battling Alzheimer’s disease for the last five years.

Her son shared her diagnosis in June, acknowledging the cruel irony of his mother being “in full dementia,” much like her beloved character of older Allie in 2004’s “The Notebook,” which he directed.

“I got my mom to play older Allie, and we spent a lot of time talking about Alzheimer’s and wanting to be authentic with it, and now, for the last five years, she’s had Alzheimer’s,” Cassavetes told Entertainment Weekly, noting his grandmother, actress Lady Rowlands, also had the disease. “It’s so crazy — we lived it, she acted it, and now it’s on us.”

Prior to the roles she became known for among younger audiences, much of Rowlands’ most celebrated work came from collaborations on 10 films with her husband John Cassavetes, two of which — 1974’s “A Woman Under the Influence” and 1980’s “Gloria” — earned her much-deserved Academy Award nominations.

While her movie star looks may have gotten her through the door in her early Hollywood days, Rowlands’ unmatched ability to play multidimensional women secured her lengthy career, which lasted more than five decades.

When asked in 2015 to explain her skills, Rowlands credited her husband for the opportunity, praising his “particular sympathetic interest in women and their problems in society, how they were treated and how they solved and overcame what they needed to.”

Though she never claimed a traditional Oscar, she was presented with an honorary Academy Award in 2015, the same the year she retired from Hollywood.

“I think one of the most wonderful things about acting is that you get to live so many lives,” she said earlier that year. “I’m sure that influenced me. I never wanted to be anything but an actress.”

Born Virginia Rowlands on June 19, 1930 in the small central Wisconsin town of Cambria, the future star was raised in the state and attended the University of Wisconsin. She was named a “Badger Beauty” one year by the student yearbook.

But Rowlands was not long for the small-town life. She moved to New York in 1953 to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

“I remember the one thing I knew was I didn’t want to fall in love, I didn’t want to get married and I didn’t want to have children,” she said in 2015. But her philosophy changed slightly when she saw a young Cassavetes watching one of her auditions.

“Once in a while, we would meet and get coffee, and he’d ask if I’d like to go out, and I said, ‘No, I’m not interested in going out with anyone. I’m going to be an actress,’” Rowlands continued.

But her insistence only lasted so long. They married in 1954.

Upon her graduation, Rowlands and Cassavetes teamed up for a variety of stage and screen productions. She appeared as an uncredited extra in her husband’s first film, “Shadows,” in 1959.

Throughout the 1960s, Rowlands appeared in numerous TV shows and movies, including 39 episodes of the soap “Peyton Place.” But her and Cassavetes’ careers really took off in the 1970s as they made independent films that were unique for Hollywood at the time.

“Our house was always mortgaged!” Rowlands said in 2015. “Whoever puts up the money is going to tell you what to do in any business, but [Cassavetes] wanted to express himself the way he saw things, so we were paying for his movies.”

In “A Woman Under the Influence,” Rowlands portrayed a mentally unstable woman whose life falls apart around her. The role earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. In 1992, she called it “the most difficult part I ever played.”

“I’ll never forget the breakdown scene in that film — it was mesmerizing and the way she played it is what makes her unique as an actress,” co-star Peter Falk said years later. “Gena made you feel that this woman’s breakdown wasn’t inevitable and you saw her searching for signs — if her husband had said the right thing, if the doctor’s tone had been more genuine.”

Rowlands followed that with star turns in her husband’s ensuing films: “Opening Night” in 1977, “Gloria” in 1980 and “Love Streams” in 1984. The duo also appeared together in 1976’s “Two-Minute Warning” and 1982’s “Tempest.”

Despite all the fun with her husband, Rowlands singled out a different film for her most exciting Hollywood moment: the 1979 made-for-TV movie “Strangers,” in which she worked alongside Bette Davis.

Following Cassavetes’ death in 1989, Rowlands continued starring in numerous films, and remained a bankable made-for-TV movie star. She won three Emmys for that work — one for “The Betty Ford Story” in 1987, one for “Face of a Stranger” in 1992 and another for “Hysterical Blindness” in 2003. She was also nominated five other times.

“I was petrified when I met her — I literally went speechless,” Winona Ryder said of working with Rowlands on 1991’s “Night on Earth.” “I’m sure she could see I was trembling, and she came up and embraced me, which was the most beautiful thing. Having worked with her, I’m just as in awe of her.”

Rowlands continued acting into the 2010s, notably appearing in the small films “Yellow” and “Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks,” the former of which was also directed by her son, Nick.

“Artists somehow stumble onto the best life in the world and I have no complaints about this life,” Rowlands said in 1992. “Maybe my next one, but not this one.”

Rowlands is survived by her husband, Robert Forrest, a retired businessman who had been friends with her and Cassavetes for years. They married in 2012. She also leaves behind her three children from her first marriage: Nick, Alexandra and Zoe.