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
So many people mistakenly think that the rest of his [John Cassavetes] pictures and the ones we did were improvised, which isn't true. He wrote all the rest of them.
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.
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.
Of course I would change anything if John Cassavetes said so - it's his script. But he was very easy about that.
John Cassavetes wrote A Woman Under the Influence as a play. He said, "Hey, I wrote you a play." And I said, "Great, let's read it." I read it and I said, "John, I couldn't do this every night and twice on Wednesday and Saturday".
It was a very hard play [Woman Under the Influence] to do every night. And John Cassavetes said, "Don't worry. Don't even think about it, you're right. I hadn't thought of that." He said, "Just forget it."
Of course, much easier to do a film when you're doing an extremely emotional part than it is doing it onstage over and over especially.
So after the Shadows he acted and directed. And it worked out very nicely. And he wrote, obviously.
Every sacred cow in the business has to do with economics.
When I went to my parents I was at the University of Wisconsin, and I just couldn't wait anymore to go be an actress.
People in independent film have a passion; they're not in it for the money.
After you play a part, you think of it as your own.
I only watch my movies that I make once, so I can just see how it hangs together, but after that, I don't watch them again. A lot of people have disappeared from Earth that you've worked with, and they make me sort of sad once in a while, and there's really no necessity for me to watch them. I've made them, and it's on film and that's that.
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.