The acclaimed American actor Gena Rowlands, a three-time Emmy winner and dual Oscar nominee, has died at the age of 94, her son, Nick Cassavetes, told Entertainment Weekly on Wednesday.
Rowlands, acclaimed for her vivid portrayals of strong, troubled women, starred in dozens of films during a career that began on stage and television in the 1950s and included award-winning roles in A Woman Under the Influence and Gloria, directed by her first husband, the actor, writer and director John Cassavetes.
In her late career, she won a legion of new fans for her role in the 2004 film The Notebook, playing the older version of actor Rachel McAdams’s character. Nick Cassavetes revealed in June that Rowlands had Alzheimer’s disease, like her own mother and the character she portrayed in that film.
“She’s in full dementia. And it’s so crazy – we lived it, she acted it, and now it’s on us,” her son, who directed the film, told Entertainment Weekly.
Rowlands and Cassavetes were the golden couple of independent films in the US in the 1970s and 80s. Cassavetes was a pioneer in cinéma vérité and Rowlands was his muse. Together they have been credited with a style of independent cinema that borrowed from the glamour and dramatic power of Hollywood.
Rowlands made 10 films with Cassavetes before his death in 1989, including the psychological drama Opening Night (1977) and the marital saga Faces (1968).
“There was always a manic energy to the performances she gave in her late husband’s films, a fear of failure, a desire to love,” the awards website Golden Derby said of Rowlands.
In A Woman Under the Influence, Rowlands played Mabel Longhetti, a housewife and mother struggling with mental illness, in a performance the US director and writer John Cameron Mitchell has described as “the greatest performance I’ve ever seen on film”.
As the tough, determined title character in Cassavetes’ 1980 film Gloria, she rescued and protected a young, orphaned boy from mobsters determined to kill him.
She was nominated for Academy Awards for both roles, and while she did not win, she received an Honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 2015. She also won three Emmys, two for best actress and one supporting actress in a miniseries or movie.
Rowlands was married to Cassavetes from 1954 until his death. They had three children. In 2012, she wed the businessman Robert Forrest.
Reuters contributed to this report.