The Most Vital Actress of Her Generation: A Goodbye to Gena Rowlands

Richard Brody, the highly esteemed critic of The New Yorker, would often wish Gena Rowlands a Happy Birthday on the 19th of every June, writing in 2022 that she was “the most inventive, creative, original, transformative actress in the history of cinema.” He wasn’t wrong. And now she’s gone. Our very own Sheila O’Malley wrote a wonderful tribute to the legend last week, but we had a few other contributors that wanted to offer their thoughts on Rowlands and her career. BRIAN TALLERICO You had to watch a Gena Rowlands performance twice to really appreciate it. The first time, you’d be too entranced by the character. There was arguably no one better at fully embodying someone who felt so real that you would forget you were watching a movie. The second time, you could see the choices Rowlands was making from small, instinctual elements of body language to the nuanced way she would play the bigger emotional beats. Rowlands was a performer who somehow felt both totally realistic and like a blinding movie star at the same time. Almost miraculously, you felt like you knew the character she was playing but also knew that she was operating on an entirely different level as a performer. In that sense, it was like watching a great athlete. Sure, we can all play baseball, and recognize the form and purpose of the game, but we’re not all good enough to make the pros. Gena Rowlands was a pro, through and through, and there will never be another like her. Note: I’m often asked my pick for the best acting performance of all time, and I’m certain that my most-given answer has been Gena Rowlands in “A Woman Under the Influence.” It’s absolute, mesmerizing perfection. ROBERT DANIELS “When I was 18, I could do anything. My emotions were so close to the surface I could feel everything easily,” says Gena Rowlands. “But now, this is years later, plays later, years later.” It’s a line of dialogue in John Cassavetes’ “Opening Night,” delivered with a mixture of anxiety, doubt, and force that I often think about. “Opening Night” was the fourth film Rowlands collaborated on with her husband, made during her late-40s—a decade when life is in full swing for most, but signals a death knell for actresses. That tension lies at the center of Rowlands’ Myrtle Gordon, a stage actress struggling to wrap her hands around the part of an older woman who seems so unlike her but in reality is so incredibly close to her. She is further unmoored by the death of a young teenage fan, who, in a bid to gain Myrtle’s autograph following a show, was accidentally struck by Myrtle’s car. Now the image of that girl, a projection of Myrtle’s own youth seems to haunt the actress. Writing about “Opening Night” through the lens of performance, Cassavetes and Rowlands’ creative and personal relationship, and Rowlands’ own approach to the craft guides one into conversations that the film has always invited. And yet, I can’t help but return to that line of dialogue. It happens in a discussion between Myrtle and the play’s writer Sarah Goode (Joan Blondell). Goode has arrived to calm Myrtle, who's been reworking the script to fit a vision of herself. But what erupts in that half-finished line: “this is years later, plays later, years later”—is a revelation about craft. In the beginning, creatively, we are tapping into emotions to bolster the experience we do not have. As we age, learning tips, tricks and routines along the way, the craft takes over. Sometimes what is sacrificed is the pure, rare emotion—cast away as though it were a crutch. In “Opening Night,” Myrtle is searching for what she’s lost. How much should the artist give of themselves to the art? When does a pound of flesh become the entire body and soul? Against Sarah, a strained, agitated Myrtle pleads that she has very little in common with the part: she isn’t married and doesn’t have kids. Acting is her life. Rowlands’ blue eyes are wide and wild. Framed in a medium shot, we see Rowlands’ body defensively tense up like a spring that doesn’t know where to pop. Cassavetes cuts to a closeup, and Rowlands’ expression has changed. There is a smirk when she leans in and says, “When I was 18, I could do anything,” the type from a person who until very recently had not questioned that an immense power still resided within. There are moments of quiet truth in her deliverance of these lines: her eyes nearly close in secrecy before opening large, where a glossy film of tear lies on the surface of the iris. There is melancholy in Myrtle’s confession. It’s the feeling that something has passed and may never return, that the sun has stopped spinning. It’s a feeling I can’t shake while knowing Rowlands, that actress as honest and as unflinching as the sun, is now gone. MARYA E. GATES As a millennial, I came to Gena Rowlands late in her career. A lot of headlines after her death mentioned "The Notebook," a film I'll admit I do love. But the first film I saw with Rowlands was "Hope Floats,"