American actress Gena Rowlands, who is known for roles including in The Notebook and Another Woman, has died at the age of 94.
Rowlands, who was nominated for an Oscar for 1974’s A Woman Under the Influence and 1980’s Gloria, died at her home in Indian Wells, California. No cause of death was given, but she had been suffering from Alzheimer’s, according to reports.
She quit acting in 2015 after winning four Emmys, two Golden Globes, and earning two Oscar nominations, according to Deadline. Both A Woman Under the Influence and Gloria were collaborations with her late husband John Cassavetes.
Her Emmys were for The Betty Ford Story, Face of a Stranger, Hysterical Blindness, and The Incredible Mrs Ritchie. Born in Wisconsin, she moved to New York and starred in the Broadway debut of The Seven Year Itch. In 1956 she starred in Broadway play Middle of the Night. In 2015, she was given an honorary Academy Award for her long acting career. “Working this long? I didn’t even think I’d be living this long,” she recently told Variety. She also starred in films Faces, Opening Night, Unhook the Stars, Yellow and Broken English, Hope Floats, Tempest, The Brink’s Job, Tony Rome and The Neon Bible.
The Notebook was directed in 2004 by her son Nick Cassavetes, who recently spoke to Entertainment Weekly about how his mother played a character suffering from dementia.
“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,” he said.
Always wanted to act “NOTEBOOK”
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 fellow student Cassavetes. “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 and appeared in Cassavetes’s directorial debut Shadows. “It was not like working for anybody else,” she told 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 Woody Allen’s 1988 drama Another Woman, and television following Cassavetes’s death.
Stay connected with Fact and US for more such news.