Credit: Far Out / 20th Century Fox
Sun 21 June 2026 21:15, UK
When Gena Rowlands started acting, no one could anticipate quite the force she would become. Sure, she showed talent early on when appearing on stage and in various TV roles, but it wasn’t until she began acting on the big screen that everything changed.
With her husband John Cassavetes, they made quite the pair, with Rowlands his go-to leading lady. He cast her in ten of his films, and it was in these particular features that she was truly able to demonstrate her skill as one of the finest actors of her generation. Together, they just understood what was needed from one another, soon becoming an artistic partnership for the ages. This wasn’t simply a case of artist and muse, though; these were two creative individuals who bounced off of each other, their shared understanding of what made great cinema allowing them both to work to their full potential.
It’s hardly surprising, then, that Rowlands sees one of the films she made with her husband as the greatest of her career. She’s got a lot to pick from – and that doesn’t even include the titles she made with other directors, like Night on Earth or The Notebook – but of course she selected A Woman Under the Influence.
Often regarded as Cassavetes’ masterpiece, the movie saw Rowlands give a career-defining performance, and it’s still rather unbelievable that she lost out on an Oscar for the part. Nominated against the likes of Faye Dunaway for Chinatown, and Valerie Perrine for Lenny, they all lost to Ellen Burstyn for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Of course, Burstyn was great, but Rowlands’ performance was a pure masterclass.
Talking to Roger Ebert, she once explained just how much she loved the film, “That was my favourite movie. I loved doing that movie. I loved it because I loved working with Peter Falk, I loved the mix of comedy in it, that was sort of real comedy.”
The movie, in which her character, Mabel, is obsessive with love for her husband, eventually leading to a nervous breakdown that results in her husband sending her away to be institutionalised, basks in honesty. She is lonely and incredibly volatile, and Rowlands plays her totally convincingly, which was surely no easy feat when you consider how intense of a character Mabel is.
“I also liked the fact that in that film, I was a little wacko, but my husband understood that and he loved me, and it didn’t bother him that I was as strange as I could be,” she explained. “When I have this terrible breakdown and have to go away for a while, leave him and my children, oh – that’s a hard scene. We’re showing a hard moment in a person’s life, a terribly hard moment. Then she comes back and they try to make it easy for her as possible. It’s just so good, all the scenes.”
A Woman Under the Influence is frequently cited as one of the greatest displays of acting brilliance ever captured on film, so it’s no surprise that Rowlands cherishes it so much.
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