Award-winning actor Gena Rowlands, whose appearances in “A Woman Under the Influence,” “Gloria” and “The Notebook” were among her many celebrated collaborations with her late husband, John Cassavetes, and their son, Nick, died Wednesday at her home in Indian Wells after a years-long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. She was 94.The news was confirmed by the office of agent Danny Greenberg, who represents Rowlands’ son, Nick Cassavetes. No other details were provided.
In late June, Nick revealed that Gena was battling Alzheimer’s disease. Gena played the older version of Rachel McAdams’ Allie in “The Notebook,” where she was living in the nursing home with James Garner who played the older version of Ryan Gosling’s Noah after being diagnosed with dementia.
Aside from “The Notebook,” Gena also starred in other entertainment offerings like “Gloria” and “A Woman Under the Influence.”
Her last project was the 2014 comedy film “Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks” where she co-starred with Cheyenne Jackson.
Rowlands was born in June 1930 in Cambria, Wisconsin. She began acting in the 1950s and made her Broadway debut in “The Seven Year Itch.”In 1955, Rowlands began to guest star in TV shows such as “Studio One,” “Laramie,” “Johnny Staccato” opposite her husband John Cassavetes, “Riverboat,” “The Lloyd Bridges Show,” “Bonanza,” “The Virginian” and “Breaking Point.”
In 1958, she made her film debut in “The High Cost of Loving.”
On TV, Rowlands earned her Primetime Emmys for “The Betty Ford Story,” “Face of a Stranger” and “Hysterical Blindness,” as well as a Daytime Emmy® for “The Incredible Mrs. Ritchie.”
Rowlands and Cassavetes teamed up for the first time in 1955’s “Time for Love,” she playing a humble small-town girl, he a traveling salesman who sweeps her off her feet. In another appearance with Cassavetes, “Won’t It Ever Be Morning?,” she portrays a jazz singer who finds herself on the witness stand when her devoted manager is wrongly accused of murder.
As a ranking member of Cassavetes’ informal company of actors, which included Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara and Seymour Cassel, Rowlands often was the face of her husband’s films at a time when many roles for women were reserved for blond bombshells.
Together they were hailed as independent-cinema royalty, operating outside the controlling and predictable studio system. The couple mortgaged their Hollywood Hills home again and again to finance his films, she said, in an effort to remain independent from the tight reins of Hollywood.
After Cassavetes died in 1989, at age 59, her son asked his mother to star in a film he was making, 1996’s “Unhook the Stars,” in which she played a middle-aged woman finally free of her family obligations.
