Gena Rowlands
Gena Rowlands
Virginia Cathryn "Gena" Rowlandsis an American film, stage, and television actress, whose career in the entertainment industry has spanned over six decades. A four-time Emmy and two-time Golden Globe winner, she is known for her collaborations with her late actor-director husband John Cassavetes in ten films, including A Woman Under the Influenceand Gloria, which earned her nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She also won the Silver Bear for Best Actress for Opening Night. In November 2015, Rowlands...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actress
Date of Birth19 June 1930
CityMadison, WI
CountryUnited States of America
Gena Rowlands quotes about
John Cassavetes was a year ahead of me but we met there. What you do when you are at a school for drama, you do a play as opposed to a final. Anyone who wanted to come could just come. So he came, and I can't remember the name of the play, of course, it was a long time ago.
You just can't complain about being alive. It's self-indulgent to be unhappy. When asked how she has coped since husband's death.
I love independent filmmaking. I don't agree with a lot of it, but that's the point.
all creative writers need a certain amount of time when they're creating something where nobody should criticize them at all - at all. Even if the criticism is valid or good, they should just shut up, and let that person create. Because at a certain point you have to make it your own - not the world's, but your own.
People in independent film have a passion; they're not in it for the money.
Every sacred cow in the business has to do with economics.
I read the script of [Woman Under the Influence ] 50 times. And I thought about it. And then I did it.
Because John Cassavetes was so terrific in live TV, a lot of his friends had not been able to participate in that yet and so they asked if he would gather with them at night when I was at the play and tell them what live TV was like, what you had to adjust to because it was its own medium - it had many things you had to be aware of.
John Cassavetes was there at night while I was working. After they [with his friends] discussed as much live TV as they felt they needed to, they started improvising scenes just for the fun of it and one of those scenes everybody got very interested in and it turned into Shadows [1959]. That movie was entirely improvised.
When I was in Middle of The Night, MGM came and offered me a contract and I said that when I got out of the play, I'd like to try it. I didn't know anything about making movies but I was certainly finding it interesting.
John [Cassavetes] loved actors. He gave them a lot of freedom. So if something came up that a certain actor just felt at the moment and said - that kind of improvisation he would accept. He gave very little direction.
I can never have a poker face. Anybody looking at me can tell exactly what I'm thinking.
I like subtitles. Sometimes I wish all movies had subtitles.
But you base everything on people you know.