I was on the bus when I read that Gena Rowlands passed away. It was a real blow, as she is one of my favourite actors and she gave some of the most incredible film performances that I’ve ever seen.

After posting a tribute to her on social media, a friend of mine, who is a big fan of hers said “it feels like losing a family member”, which may sound extreme in a way, but in a way it isn’t.

Her performances touched people’s lives. She committed to every single role she played with such intensity that you felt you with her on the screen because you can feel her every emotion.

I’ve been extremely fortunate to have interviewed people who worked with her. Actor/Director, Leslie Hope, who appeared in Love Streams with Gena Rowlands, Dilyn Murphy, who appeared in Minnie And Moskowitz with Gena Rowlands and her father Seymour Cassel. And Steve Reisch, who was the photographer on the stage plays Gena Rowlands did with her first husband John Cassavetes in the early 1980s, which Steve also acted in. They all told me incredible stories about working with Gena and I could see how much the experience of working with her meant to them.

She was in almost every single film John Cassavetes wrote and directed. From A Child is Waiting (1963) to Faces (1968), Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), A Woman Under The Influence (1974), Opening Night (1977), Gloria (1980) and Love Streams (1984). She even appeared briefly in a non-speaking role in Cassavetes’ first film Shadows (1959).

Every single one of these performances are 100 percent truthful and you don’t even feel like she’s acting. Her co-star, Peter Falk, who played her husband Nick in A Woman Under the Influence didn’t even think she was acting in the incredible scene where she begins to panic when he has her committed to a mental institution.

As vulnerable, raw, complex and intense as these performances are, Gena is often very funny in many of them. We often overlook the comedy in John Cassavetes movies, but Gena is absolutely hilarious at times even in A Woman Under the Influence, which we know to be (rightfully so) such an intense performance, but the comedic chops she displays is equally as riveting.

Gena Rowlands can also do so much with the smallest of reactions. In Faces she plays a sex worker (Jeannie) and in one scene one of her regular customers, Richard (John Marley) tells her gently to be herself, after she was trying to make him laugh. You can see in her reaction how hurt she was, but she tries to hide this from him. She goes to the other room with her back to the camera, and as she turns around she has tears pouring down her face.

In those reactions, Gena tells the audience so much about this character. How she doesn’t want to show Richard that he hurt her feelings, and that she leaves in order for him to not see her cry because she cannot show her vulnerability to him. I would imagine it’s because she is afraid to lose him as a client, or perhaps she was just stunned that he would suddenly say that, since he often joked around and danced with her. Or both. Like with all Cassavetes films, it’s complex.

On top of all of the intense, funny and vulnerable parts, Gena played she could also be tough as nails. In Gloria (1980), she plays a gangster who you do not want to mess with. She had the ability as an actor to intimidate and threaten the toughest of characters in that film and it is completely convincing.

What I also find so impressive and inspirational about her is that some of the films Gena Rowlands did with her husband were financed independently, and so while they were being made, no one even knew if they would get released. She was such a true actor that she did those roles anyways because she wanted to play those rich, funny and complicated parts. It was never about money or awards, it was about telling stories with people she loved working with.

Gena’sperformances in Cassavetes films are discussed and praised the most, but she was in over 100 films and television shows. She also starred on Broadway in Middle of the Night by Paddy Chayefsky with Edward G. Robinson.

Other amazing performances she gave are in Another Woman (1988), Night on Earth (1991), Lonely are the Brave(1962), Hysterical Blindness (2002), Two Minute Warning (1976), among many others.

Gena Rowlands will surely be missed, but her performances will live on and they will continue to inspire many generations of actors to come.