Remembering actor Gena Rowlands, a Wisconsin native who put raw truth onscreen


By Dean Robbins | January 16, 2025

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  • In this Thursday, Dec. 4, 2014 photo, actress Gena Rowlands poses for a portrait at the London West Hollywood hotel in West Hollywood, Calif. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

In this Thursday, Dec. 4, 2014 photo, actress Gena Rowlands poses for a portrait at the London West Hollywood hotel in West Hollywood, Calif. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

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Actor Gena Rowlands was known for her dramatic, deeply emotional performances in movies like “A Woman Under the Influence,” “Gloria” and “The Notebook.” She won four Emmy awards, two Golden Globes and was nominated for two Academy Awards, eventually receiving an Honorary Oscar in 2015.

Rowlands’ career began in Wisconsin and spanned decades before she passed away at age 94 on Aug. 14, 2024. Author Dean Robbins looks back on Rowlands’ legacy and one of her most iconic roles.

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Gena Rowlands was born in Cambria, Wisconsin, in 1930, a descendant of the village’s original settlers from Wales. Though it had only 600 residents, Cambria cared about culture. The village funded a lavish library and hosted a Shakespeare club. Rowlands’s mother often traveled to Madison to perform in plays.

So it’s no surprise that young Rowlands dreamed of an acting career herself. She saw several movies a week and idolized tough gal Bette Davis.

“In those days, women were expected to be sweet and obedient. God, (it) just wasn’t what I was interested in. And Bette was always playing something that had a lot of bite to it,” said Gena Rowlands in a video from Academy Originals.

At age 11, Rowlands met movie star Fred MacMurray in nearby Beaver Dam, his hometown. If MacMurray could make the leap from southern Wisconsin to major motion pictures like “Double Indemnity,” why couldn’t she?

Rowlands began her acting career at age 14, winning a theater scholarship. After entering the University of Wisconsin in 1947, she was selected as a “Badger Beauty” and featured in the student yearbook. In 1950, a UW adviser suggested she leave Madison for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. And her timing couldn’t have been better.

It was a golden age for live television, theater and film, and Rowlands had the skills. She found work on Broadway, on TV anthology series like “The United States Steel Hour,” and in Hollywood movies. Even in conventional roles, like 1958’s “The High Cost of Loving,” she conveyed real intensity.

Rowlands’s 1954 marriage to the actor, writer and director John Cassavetes began a three-decade collaboration—one that would transform American film. Together, they sought to move beyond dramatic clichés and put raw truth onscreen. In his influential indie movies, Cassavetes gave actors the chance to explore dark, dangerous corners of the human psyche. “Shadows,” “Faces” and other classics were shot in the couple’s home, with their friends and family as cast members. These were films made for love, not money. 

“It’s a tricky life, but it was so exciting and wonderful, because you were doing what you really wanted to do,” Rowlands said in a video from Academy Originals. “I love movies because I love the variety of how many lives you could lead.”

Rowlands’ greatest performance in a Cassavetes film came in 1974’s “A Woman Under the Influence.” She plays the manic-depressive Mabel, who struggles to live up to the constricting roles of wife and mother.

Rowlands creates one of the most daringly eccentric movie characters of the 1970s, up there with Peter Finch in “Network” and Robert De Niro in “Taxi Driver.” Her expressions speak volumes about her troubled marriage, with teeth bared and nostrils flaring. The actress keeps you on the edge of your seat, wondering what she’ll do next.

Rowlands earned an Academy Award nomination for “A Woman Under the Influence.” On Oscar night in April 1975, she received a delivery of roses from her biggest fans: the folks back home in Cambria.

Dean Robbins

Dean Robbins

Dean Robbins is a children’s author based in Madison. He has won state and national awards for arts, features and news stories, and has contributed to magazines and newspapers around the country.
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2025-01-16T12:35:25-06:00Tags: , , , , , , |

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