Gena Rowlands, Actress Who Brought Raw Drama to Her Roles, Dies at 94

Gena Rowlands, the intense, elegant dramatic actress who, often in collaboration with her husband, John Cassavetes, starred in a series of introspective independent films, has died. She was 94.

The death was confirmed by the office of Daniel Greenberg, a representative for Ms. Rowlands’s son, the director Nick Cassavetes. No other details were given.

In June, her family said that she had been living with Alzheimer’s disease for five years.

Ms. Rowlands, who often played intoxicated, deranged or otherwise on-the-verge characters, was nominated twice for best actress Oscars in performances directed by Mr. Cassavetes. The first was the title role in “A Woman Under the Influence” (1974), in which her desperate, insecure character is institutionalized by her blue-collar husband (Peter Falk) because he doesn’t know what else to do. The critic Roger Ebert wrote in The Chicago Sun-Times that Ms. Rowlands was “so touchingly vulnerable to every kind of influence around her that we don’t want to tap her because she might fall apart.”

Her second nomination was for “Gloria” (1980), in which she starred as a gangster’s moll on the run with an orphaned boy.

But it was “Faces” (1968), in which she starred as a young prostitute opposite John Marley, that first brought the Cassavetes-Rowlands partnership to moviegoers’ attention. Critics spread the word; Renata Adler described the film in The New York Times as “a really important movie” about “the way things are,” and Mr. Ebert called it “astonishing.”