Karen Allen

Biography

Born Karen Jane Allen on October 5, 1951, in rural Carrollton, Illinois, she and her two [Karen Allen High School Portrait] sisters were shuttled through Knoxville, Chattanooga and Pittsburgh before the family settled in Washington, D.C when she was 11. Her father, Carroll Thompson Allen, worked for the FBI and her mother, Patricia A. Howell, was a school teacher. She lacked direction after graduating from DuVal High School in Glenn Dale, MD, in 1969. She studied design at New York's Fashion Institure of Technology, ran a boutique, wrote short stories, lived alone in Jamaica for five months, and drove from Mexico to Peru with friends who were filming a documentary on South American Indians. Karen also managed to squeeze in some classes at George Washington University (1974 - 76) and the University of Maryland.

She had decided she wanted to be a writer, until at 20 (1971) she saw a performance by Jerzy Grotowski's Polish Theatre Lab. "I didn't understand a word they said, but there was something in their acting that went beyond understanding. I was transfixed." Karen was able to study with the troupe for a while.
[Karen Allen]
Then on December 8, 1973 she auditioned for and won a small role in Saint, produced by St. Columba Church. She toured with it for six months, even going to England and Scotland. Shortly after that she auditioned for the Washington Theatre Laboratory Company in Washington, D.C. "[They were] a small group of actors in their 20s, run by a man who had experience with Peter Brook and Grotowski, and I spent five years with them, producing, directing and acting" and, at times, even living in the back of a theatre. During that time she also appeared in her first film, a short film called The Widget Maker, which won several awards including one from the American Film Institute.

"I loved living and breathing theatre so much that I decided I had to find a way to bring my desire to act and my ability to support myself together. I'd run through the possibilities in Washington, so that meant moving to New York." She moved back to the Big Apple in 1977, working variously as a waitress, house painter, bookstore clerk, and chief sandwich maker in a wine-and-cheese shop.

She studied acting for a time with Method guru Lee Strasberg at the Theatre Institute, and acted in various student short films at NYU (The Aftermath), but by the time John Landis chose her for the female lead in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), she was on poverty row. "I was so lucky. I was very broke and I was taking classes at Lee Strasberg's Institute and I saw a 3 X 5 index card on the bulletin board advertising for college-aged girls for a film. That was Animal House."
[Stephen Bishop]
National Lampoon's Animal House was her major film debut, for which she was paid $3,000 ("pretty pathetic"). Shortly after filming wrapped, at age 28, she was afflicted with epidemic keratoconjunctivitis (EKC), a virus infection that caused a severe loss of vision. The disease went away three months later, but left her corneas slightly scarred and her sight somewhat less than perfect.

She became involved in a relationship with singer-songwriter Stephan Bishop, who had a small part in National Lampoon's Animal House. For four years they "yo-yo'ed" between his LA canyon retreat and her townhouse duplex on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

Her career received a big boost when Steven Spielberg selected her to create the role of Marion Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Fans were surprised when she was not invited to reprise the role in either of two sequels. The reasons for her absence have been a favorite topic of speculation for Indiana Jones fans ever since.

She made her Broadway debut in The Monday After the Miracle (1982) for which she won a Theatre World Award (1983) as Best New Actress. Other stage credits include The Miracle Worker, Extremeties, The Glass Menagerie, As You Like It, The Country Girl, and others, at numerous venues from Charleston, South Carolina, to Montclair, New Jersey, to Williamstown, Massachusetts. [Kale Brown]

In 1987 at a benefit performance at Olympia Dukakis' The Whole Theatre in Montclair, NJ, she met Kale Browne (nee David Charles Browne), a popular TV soap opera actor. Karen was singing, and Kale was being auctioned off for a dance. Kale and Karen were married the next year, on May 1, 1988. Kale played Michael Hudson on Another World from January 26, 1986 until the summer of 1997. They appeared together as husband and wife in both Challenger and 'Til There Was You.

After the birth of their son Nicholas on September 14, 1990, Karen and Kale decided to scale back their careers to spend more time raising young Nicholas. Karen took smaller, less time-consuming roles in movies like The Sandlot and King of the Hill, while in January of 1992, Kale took a three year respite from Another World. Also in 1992 they bought a renovated 19th-century barn on a 22 acre farm in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts where Karen and Nick still live. Karen and Kale split up in late 1997 and divorced after ten years of marriage.
[Karen Allen]
Karen Allen is involved in more than just acting. In 1990 she founded her own yoga center, Berkshire Mountain Yoga, an institution she ran until 2000. But then, in 2001, Karen came to a two-pronged realization: that she wanted to be able to produce more of her knitwear in a shorter amount of time, and that her acting career "was sort of winding down."

"I wanted to be able to really let my fascination and interest with this develop more than just doing the occasional hand-knitted sweater or scarf," she said. "In the process of that, I thought, 'Well, I'm sort of getting to this point in my acting career where there really isn't that much that is interesting to do.' I mean, I love acting, I love working in theater, I loved making films, but I'm looking for something to do in my life where every day is interesting."

Thus, in June of 2005 she opened Karen Allenï¿½Fiber Art in Great Barrington, MA, where she teaches advanced knitting, sweater design and multi-color knitting and also sells her work.

While Nicholas was in grade school, Karen moved back to Manhattan to more aggressively pursue her acting career full time. She was busy with stage roles and appears in four up-coming films: The Root, Briar Patch, Poster Child and When Will I Be Loved. This past summer, she decided to leave New York and move back to her Berkshire farm. Between projects Karen has been seen in the company of actor/writer Michael David Lally and writer Robert Forte. She hints that there are big things still ahead for her acting career.