# What is the best Gena Rowlands performance?

> Raw Cassavetes dramas, a mob-chased taxi ride and a few softer late-career turns. Picking one means deciding which kind of devastating you prefer.

*By YPB Team · Published October 24, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-gena-rowlands-performance*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **A Woman Under the Influence** — score 1000/1000
   Her Oscar-nominated turn as Mabel Longhetti, a housewife unravelling, in John Cassavetes' 1974 drama.
2. **Light of Day** — score 642/1000
   She plays a mother in conflict with her rock-musician daughter in this 1987 Paul Schrader drama.
3. **Opening Night** — score 569/1000
   She plays Myrtle Gordon, a stage star haunted by a ghost of her younger self, in Cassavetes' 1977 backstage drama.
4. **Gloria** — score 568/1000
   The 1980 thriller in which she protects a young boy from the mob and earned another Oscar nomination.
5. **Another Woman** — score 568/1000
   A subtle supporting role in Woody Allen's 1988 drama about a philosophy professor reassessing her life.
6. **Hysterical Blindness** — score 568/1000
   A 2002 HBO drama in which she plays a mother in 1980s New Jersey and won an Emmy.
7. **Love Streams** — score 374/1000
   Cassavetes' 1984 drama where she plays Sarah, a woman struggling with divorce and her brother's chaos.
8. **Faces** — score 374/1000
   A supporting turn as a call girl in Cassavetes' raw 1968 portrait of a collapsing marriage.
9. **Hope Floats** — score 374/1000
   The warm 1998 drama in which she plays the wise, outspoken mother of Sandra Bullock's character.
10. **Lonely Are the Brave** — score 374/1000
   An early role as the wife of a cowboy out of time, opposite Kirk Douglas in 1962.
11. **A Child Is Waiting** — score 374/1000
   A 1963 drama directed by Cassavetes with Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland, in which she plays a mother of a disabled child.
12. **Minnie and Moskowitz** — score 0/1000
   A 1971 screwball romance where she plays a museum curator who falls for a parking attendant.
13. **The Notebook** — score 0/1000
   The older Allie, lost in dementia, in the 2004 romance directed by her son Nick Cassavetes.
14. **Tempest** — score 0/1000
   A 1982 modern retelling of Shakespeare's play in which she stars with John Cassavetes and Susan Sarandon.
15. **The Betty Ford Story** — score 0/1000
   The 1987 TV movie in which she played the former First Lady's struggle with addiction and won an Emmy.

Tags: movies, actors, classics, performances, gena rowlands