Gena Rowlands

Virginia Cathryn Rowlands, known professionally as Gena Rowlands, was born on June 19, 1930, in Madison, Wisconsin, and died on August 14, 2024. Her father, Edwin Myrwyn Rowlands, was a banker, state legislator, and member of the Wisconsin Progressive Party of Welsh descent. Her mother, Mary Allen, was a housewife who later pursued acting under the stage name Lady Rowlands. Rowlands had an elder brother, David. The family relocated to Washington, D.C., in 1939 when Edwin took a position with the United States Department of Agriculture, then to Milwaukee in 1942 when he became branch manager of the Office of Price Administration, and later to Minneapolis. From 1947 to 1950, Rowlands attended the University of Wisconsin, where she was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma. She subsequently left for New York City to study drama at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Rowlands began her professional stage career in the early 1950s, performing with repertory theatre companies and at the Provincetown Playhouse. Her Broadway debut came in The Seven Year Itch, which she also toured in a national production. In 1956, she appeared on Broadway in Middle of the Night opposite Edward G. Robinson. Her Broadway career spanned from 1952 to 1956.

Her screen career began in earnest during the same period. She costarred with Paul Stewart in the 26-episode syndicated television series Top Secret, which ran from 1954 to 1955, and guest-starred on numerous anthology series in 1955, including Robert Montgomery Presents, Armstrong Circle Theatre, Studio One, Appointment with Adventure, The United States Steel Hour, and Goodyear Television Playhouse. Rowlands made her film debut in The High Cost of Loving in 1958. The following year she appeared in the Western series Laramie, the detective series Johnny Staccato alongside her husband John Cassavetes, and the Western series Riverboat, starring Darren McGavin. In 1962, she starred in director David Miller's Lonely Are the Brave with Kirk Douglas and Walter Matthau, playing the former lover of the Douglas character, now married to his best friend.

The defining creative partnership of Rowlands's career was her collaboration with Cassavetes, with whom she made ten films. These included A Child Is Waiting (1963), Faces (1968), Machine Gun McCain (1969), Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), Two-Minute Warning (1976), Opening Night (1977), Gloria (1980), Tempest (1982), and Love Streams (1984). Her performances in A Woman Under the Influence and Gloria each earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. For Opening Night, she received the Silver Bear for Best Actress.

Beyond her work with Cassavetes, Rowlands built a substantial body of work across film and television. She starred in William Friedkin's The Brink's Job in 1978 and in Woody Allen's Another Woman in 1988, playing Marion Post, a middle-aged professor whose overheard therapy sessions prompt a journey of self-discovery. Jim Jarmusch's Night on Earth followed in 1991. In 1985, she played a mother in the made-for-TV film An Early Frost, and in 1987 she won an Emmy Award for her portrayal of former First Lady Betty Ford in The Betty Ford Story. A third Emmy came in 2002 for her role in Mira Nair's HBO film Hysterical Blindness. In 2004, she won a Daytime Emmy for her role as Mrs. Evelyn Ritchie in The Incredible Mrs. Ritchie.

That same year, Rowlands starred as the older version of Rachel McAdams's character in the romantic drama The Notebook, directed by her son Nick Cassavetes, with James Garner playing her husband. In 2005, she appeared in the gothic thriller The Skeleton Key opposite Kate Hudson, Peter Sarsgaard, and John Hurt. Her daughter Zoe Cassavetes wrote and directed Broken English in 2007, in which Rowlands played a supporting role opposite Parker Posey and Melvil Poupaud.

Rowlands was a four-time Emmy Award winner and a two-time Golden Globe winner over the course of her career, which spanned nearly seven decades across film, stage, and television. In November 2015, she received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of her screen performances.