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| Birth Name(s) : Gena Rowlands |
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Full Gena Rowlands Biography
Gena Rowlands (born June 19, 1930) is an American actress who has twice been nominated for an Academy Award, and has won three Emmy Awards for her performances.
Rowlands was born Virginia Cathryn Rowlands in Madison, Wisconsin, and was raised in Cambria, Wisconsin. Her father, Edwin Myrwyn Rowlands, was a banker and a state legislator, and her mother, Mary Allen (née Neal), was a painter and housewife originally from Arkansas. The family moved to Washington, D.C. in 1939 when Edwin was appointed to a position in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1942 when he was appointed as branch manager of the Office of Price Administration, and later to Minneapolis, Minnesota. Gena attended the University of Wisconsin from 1947 to 1950, where she was a popular student already renowned for her beauty. She left for New York City to study drama at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Rowlands went from understudy to lead role in the original Broadway production of The Seven Year Itch. She opened and starred in Middle of the Night (1956) opposite film icon Edward G. Robinson.
She made her film debut in The High Cost of Loving in 1958. She guest starred in several anthology television series, including Robert Montgomery Presents, Kraft Television Theatre and Studio One, among many others. In 1961 she starred in the well-received television series 87th Precinct, and in 1964 in Peyton Place.
Teaming with her husband, writer and director John Cassavetes, whom she married in 1954, Rowlands starred in many productions, including Staccato, A Child Is Waiting, Faces, Gloria (nomination for Academy Award for Best Actress), Love Streams, Minnie and Moskowitz, She's So Lovely, and A Woman Under the Influence (Academy Award nomination for Best Actress). She starred in The Neon Bible.
In 1985, Rowlands played the mother in the critically acclaimed made-for-TV movie An Early Frost. In recent years, she has appeared in Paulie and in Mira Nair's HBO movie, Hysterical Blindness for which she won her third Emmy.
In 2005, she appeared opposite Kate Hudson, Peter Sarsgaard, and John Hurt in the gothic thriller The Skeleton Key.
Rowlands has been the subject of a considerable amount of controversy because of certain actions that she has taken regarding John Cassavetes' films. Perhaps the most notorious of these deals concerns the recently-rediscovered original version of Shadows, which for years was widely-believed to be missing or to have been destroyed. After well over a decade of searching for the film, Ray Carney managed to find a print. Upon hearing of Carney's discovery, Rowlands demanded that all copies of the film be turned over to her, and — in Carney's words — she declared that she would do anything necessary to keep the film from being seen, including destroy the print.
There are lesser-known incidents regarding screenings of the films Husbands and Love Streams. The UCLA Film and Television Archive mounted a restoration of Husbands, as it was pruned down (without Cassavetes's consent, and in violation of his contract) by Columbia Pictures several months after its release, in an attempt to restore as much of the removed content as possible. However, at Rowlands' request, UCLA created an alternative print with almost ten minutes of content edited out, as Rowlands felt that these scenes were in poor taste. The alternative print is the only one that has been made available for rental. It is not clear what legal authority she had to take these actions. |
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