US actress Gena Rowlands was nominated for two Oscars and delivered memorable, heartfelt and often troubling performances. Here are five of her best: In this low-budget, critically acclaimed Western, Rowlands is a loyal friend in love with a noble cowboy who is resisting the modern world, played by Hollywood titan Kirk Douglas. Rowlands only appears in a few scenes, but her performance had an immediate impact.
"I'd never seen anyone that beautiful with a certain gravitas. It was particularly unique in that time, when many women were trying to be girlish," said actress Mia Farrow in 2015, quoted in Elle magazine. "Gena did none of that.
There was a directness not that she wasn't fun and didn't smolder but it came from a place that was both genuine and deep," Farrow said. Nominated for three Oscars, this domestic drama directed by independent US filmmaker John Cassavetes Rowlands's husband follows four people over a night of drinking in which painful tensions about an unravelling marriage emerge. Rowlands reveals a great range of expression and emotion in the film, which is shot mostly close-up and appears unscripted but was in fact carefully written.
In arguably her greatest role, Rowlands is at her most subtle and moving as the loving and vulnerable housewife and mother, Mabel, who slowly descends into heartbreaking madness. She was nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe, the film remaining a classic of devastating emotional force. "The performance is as startling toda.