Gena Rowlands, hailed as one of the greatest actors to ever practice the craft and a guiding light in independent cinema as a star in groundbreaking movies by her director husband, John Cassavetes, and later charmed audiences in her son's tear-jerker The Notebook , has died. She was 94. Rowlands' death was confirmed Wednesday by representatives for her son, filmmaker Nick Cassavetes.
He revealed earlier this year that his mother had Alzheimer's disease. TMZ reported that Rowlands died Wednesday at her home in Indian Wells, Calif. Operating outside the studio system, the husband-and-wife team of John Cassavetes and Rowlands created indelible portraits of working-class strivers and small-timers in such films as A Woman Under the Influence , Gloria and Faces .
10 films with John Cassavetes Gena Rowlands and her late husband John Cassavetes in 1984. Cassavetes, an actor, director and screenwriter, died in 1989. The couple made 10 films together.
(Mike McKeown/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Rowlands made 10 films across four decades with Cassavetes, including Minnie and Moskowitz in 1971, Opening Night in 1977 and Love Streams in 1984. She earned two Oscar nods for two of them: 1974's A Woman Under the Influence , in which she played a wife and mother cracking under the burden of domestic harmony, and Gloria in 1980, about a woman who helps a young boy escape the mob. "He had a particular sympathetic interest in women and their problems in society, how they were treate.