Gena Rowlands had a late life blockbuster, “The Notebook,” which made for a fine curtain call on a career that spanned half a century.

She played the older version of Rachel McAdams in a teary eyed romance about a devoted husband (James Garner) who reads to her of a great love story that they both lived through but which she — suffering from dementia — has forgotten.

Not bad. But she made her best films with her indie icon husband John Cassavettes in their salad days.

And the couple of times I interviewed her over the years all I wanted to talk about was “Gloria.”

Playing a former mob moll sucked into caring for the child of a mob accountant, whose entire family is then slaughtered with only Gloria standing between the kid and the same fate, she was uncharacteristically fierce in the part.

I love this fan-made trailer to the hard nosed but sentimental thriller, which came out in 1980.

I made her repeat her iconic line, after she’s just shot up another bunch of gangsters out to clean house, if memory serves.

“Let a WOMAN beat ya,” she bellowed, and laughed, both in the film and in that interview.

She collected a couple of Oscar nominations over the decades, worked with great directors and on TV, had Pedro Almodovar’s most famous film dedicated to her and showed up at film festivals to keep her late husband’s legacy alive by doing Q &As about his movies with his other frequent collaborator, Seymour Cassell.

She showed a Cassavettes classic at the Florida Film Festival some years back and entertained adoring fans afterwards.

But whatever else Rowland played, all the other honors she earned in her storied career, “Gloria” was the role a film buff never forgets.