Gena Rowlands

RIP

In 2014, I attended a SAG Foundation screening of "Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks" at the New School on 12th Street (where I went to grad school. Walking into that auditorium was like walking into my own past). Afterwards, there was a Q & A onstage with Gena Rowlands and director Arthur Allan Seidelman, moderated by Broadway World's Richard Ridge. Rowlands and Seidelman worked together before, in 1988's "Grace & Glorie" for television, and they both expressed happiness at working together again. The QA wasn’t just about the film we had just seen. It was about her work and career, in general. It was an audience full of actors, not film critics. Therefore, the questions were better. Sorry, colleagues, but it’s true! The questions were all acting-process questions, and the answers were fascinating. An audience member asked her how she knew when she “found” a character, or IF she knew when she “found” it, and Gena’s answer was so good: