Gena Rowlands Quotations

I always do make a back story for myself, but I'm not sure how necessary it is. I just like to.

I love independent filmmaking. I don't agree with a lot of it, but that's the point.

I can never have a poker face. Anybody looking at me can tell exactly what I'm thinking.

People in independent film have a passion; they're not in it for the money.

The thing about acting is you don't want to let on how enjoyable it is or then everybody would want to become an actress. But it really is. It's a pleasure to go and exchange your identity.

After you play a part, you think of it as your own.

I like subtitles. Sometimes I wish all movies had subtitles.

But you base everything on people you know.

Getting a good role is hard for anyone.

I always felt her vulnerability. You could always see it, though she'd have killed you if you said so.

I think everybody has tried the Ouija board, ... I used to be into astrology and such, but then I got more fatalistic about things. I'd rather be surprised.

It was when A Woman Under the Influence played at the New York Film Festival. It would be hard to top that. It was one of the most extraordinary nights of my life.

I like to think that Mrs. Asher is a lot stranger mother than I am. I hope that that's true. She's one of the strangest characters I've ever played.

Child, I believe you broke my legs. ... Skeleton Key.

If I have something I like to forget, then I forget it.

Never in my life have I ever even thought about anything else [ being anything other than an actress].

[John Cassavetes] came backstage afterwards and introduced himself and we talked a bit, and then went for a little coffee at the Russian Tea Room next door. It just...started.

He[John Cassavetes] was just being an actor. A very successful actor, especially in live TV. He did many wonderful performances.

I got a part opposite Edward G. Robinson in a play called Middle of The Night, which Paddy Cheyafsky had written. It played for a long time because everybody just loved Edward G. Robinson, everybody in New York wanted to see it. John [Cassavetes] and I were married at the time and put into a position where I was working very long evening hours and he was working in the daytime and so there was a lot of spare time.

Because John Cassavetes was so terrific in live TV, a lot of his friends had not been able to participate in that yet and so they asked if he would gather with them at night when I was at the play and tell them what live TV was like, what you had to adjust to because it was its own medium - it had many things you had to be aware of.

It was more freedom than I think most people get when they're starting out - or even when they're not starting out. He [John Cassavetes] did his thing and I did whatever I thought.

It was a period when live TV was just starting and getting popular and they took it seriously too. Not so much like TV now. They did [Ernst] Hemingway and [William] Faulkner - and they're all wonderful artists and it just was very creative at that time.

I went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, which was in Carnegie Hall, which itself was exciting - just to walk into it.

I think that I was lucky to have that period of time [ like coming to New York] because everything was so exciting and new.

I'd wanted to be [an actress] all my life.

So I went home and I told my mom that I wanted to quit and be an actress and she said, "Huh, that sounds fascinating. It's wonderful!" [laughs] And I told my father and he literally said, "I don't care if you want to be an elephant trainer if it makes you happy."

I think I have the only parents in the world who would not have said something against become an actress.

Bette Davis had very strong opinions and was not afraid to express them. She wasn't afraid of anything that I ever saw. And she was so funny. She's just funny and she was laughing all the time.

I just loved Bette Davis and the fact that I had a chance to work with her [on the 1979 TV movie Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter] was momentous.

I loved Bette Davis when I was little and when I was big and when I got old.

A Woman Under the Influence was my favorite. I loved doing that. And it was challenging.

Paddy Chayefksy was writing and it was a time where everybody was happy to be there [on TV].

I read the script of [Woman Under the Influence ] 50 times. And I thought about it. And then I did it.

John [Cassavetes] had shot a great deal of Shadows and I had to go fulfill my contract in California, so he and all the rest of the Shadows cast came out to California and they finished it off and he cut it. He turned the garage into an editing room and he was by then a director of Shadows. That's the only thing he'd directed. But, he loved it.

When I was in Middle of The Night, MGM came and offered me a contract and I said that when I got out of the play, I'd like to try it. I didn't know anything about making movies but I was certainly finding it interesting.

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.

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.

all creative writers need a certain amount of time when they're creating something where nobody should criticize them at all - at all. Even if the criticism is valid or good, they should just shut up, and let that person create. Because at a certain point you have to make it your own - not the world's, but your own.

You just can't complain about being alive. It's self-indulgent to be unhappy. When asked how she has coped since husband's death.