Gena Rowlands

She was recently in The Notebook, which was directed by her son, Nick Cassavetes. Additionally, she has won many Soap Opera Digest Awards, including one for Favorite Couple with Mark Derwin in 2000. In recent years she has appeared in Paulie and in Mira Nair's HBO movie, Hysterical Blindness. She has won the "Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series" Daytime Emmy in 1984, 1986, 1992, 1995, and 1996 (the most won by any daytime actress). She starred in The Neon Bible. Viki also found out that she had two long-lost daughters: Megan (played by Jessica Tuck from 1989 through 1992) and Natalie (Melissa Archer); this is in addition to her other children, Kevin (most recently played by Dan Gauthier), Joey (Bruce Michael Hall), and Jessica (Bree Williamson). Teaming with her husband, writer and director John Cassavetes, Rowlands starred in many productions, including Staccato, A Child Is Waiting, Faces, Gloria (nomination for Academy Award for Best Actress), Love Streams, Minnie and Moskowitz, She's So Lovely, Two Minute Warning and A Woman Under the Influence (Academy Award nomination). She has also had to go through the process of many divorces (such that her full legal name is now Victoria Lord Riley Burke Riley Buchanan Buchanan Carpenter Davidson), the deaths of loved ones, breast cancer, stroke, and heart disease.

In 1961 she starred in the well-received television series 87th Precinct, and in 1964 in Peyton Place. Victoria, who is known as "Viki", has had to live with Dissociative Identity Disorder (also known as DID). She starred in several anthology television series, including Robert Montgomery Presents, Kraft Television Theatre and Studio One, among many others. Slezak's character has gone through many tragedies. Rowlands appeared in Broadway in the late 1950s, and made her film debut in The High Cost of Loving in 1958. She portrays Victoria "Viki" Lord on the ABC soap opera, One Life to Live, a role she has depicted since March 17, 1971. Her father was a state Assemblyman. She is the daughter of actor Walter Slezak.

Born Virginia Cathryn Rowlands in Cambria, Wisconsin, she attended the University of Wisconsin. Erika Slezak (born August 5, 1946 in Hollywood, California) is an American actress of Austrian descent. Gena Rowlands (born June 19, circa 1930) is an American actress.