Gena Rowlands

Fire, earth and air take three of her ten planets each, with a single one in water, and four of the ten are mutable. The Sun, Mercury and Jupiter spread across twenty three degrees of Gemini. Saturn was the only retrograde planet. The record says Rowlands made ten films with her husband John Cassavetes, largely outside the studio system, and gave two of the most demanding performances in American cinema in A Woman Under the Influence and Gloria.

The Sun sits conjunct Jupiter at just over two thirds of a degree, and the reading is confidence as a character trait rather than an achievement, with a warning attached: that nothing in the combination teaches restraint, so the scale of everything tends to run ahead of the substance. The record's last clause inverts that warning in the plainest terms available, because what it credits her with is the substance. Two performances described as the most demanding in a national cinema is not scale running ahead of anything.

The Sun also sits a fifth of a turn from Uranus at a similar orb, independence without a fight, read as people who are unusual and untroubled by being unusual, and as sudden opportunities that suit them. Ten films made largely outside the studio system is the independence, and the record does not say whether it was a fight, which is the half of the reading a chart has no way to supply. A Gemini Sun carries a reputation for restlessness besides, and a working life spent making ten films with one collaborator is built on staying rather than on moving.

Her Moon sits on the second degree of Aries at noon with Pisces still possible, so it is left out, and the two closest contacts in the chart go with it. What remains is a very even chart, three elements holding three planets each, which gives a reader little to lean on and is worth saying plainly rather than dressing up. Venus sits in quiet contact with Neptune at under three fifths of a degree, compassionate love, read as generosity and as a real gift for beauty, colour and music. She died at Indian Wells on 14 August 2024, at ninety four. Pluto stood in direct opposition to her natal Venus at a quarter of a degree that day and Venus in easy contact with her natal Mars at a third. The Moon was at its first quarter and seventy one per cent lit, a phase that acts decisively and often has to break something to do it.