Karen Allen

Karen Jane Allen (born October 5, 1951) is an American actress most famous for her roles in the films National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and Starman (1984).

Biography

Early life

Allen was born in Carrollton, in rural central Illinois, to Carroll Thompson Allen (an FBI agent) and Patricia A. Howell. Allen spent her first 10 years traveling around the country with her parents and two sisters. At 17, after graduating from high school, she moved to New York to study art and design. She later attended the University of Maryland, College Park and spent time traveling through South and Central America. In 1974, Allen joined a theater group and three years later moved back to New York and studied at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute.

Acting career

In 1978, Allen made her major film debut in National Lampoon's Animal House and Hollywood took notice. Her next two appearances were in The Wanderers in 1979 and A Small Circle of Friends in 1980, where she played one of three radical college students during the 1960s. The United Artists-release of that film received only limited theatrical exposure, ultimately grossing under $1 million.^[1] Her next big role came with Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), where she played the feisty heroine Marion Ravenwood. Allen won a Saturn Award for Best Actress in a film for her role in the film.

Allen also debuted on Broadway in 1982's The Monday After The Miracle. After a few small films including Until September (1984), directed by Richard Marquand, and other stage appearances, she made the successful science fiction film Starman (1984). She often took breaks from movie roles to concentrate on stage acting.

1988 saw Allen return as Bill Murray's long-lost love Claire Philips in the Christmas comedy Scrooged. In 1990, she also portrayed crew member Christa McAuliffe in the controversial movie Challenger, based on the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

Allen subsequently appeared in Spike Lee's Malcolm X (1992), The Perfect Storm (2000), and In the Bedroom (2001), and made guest appearances on television's Law & Order (1996) and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2001). She also starred in the short-lived series The Road Home (1994).

She is rumored to co-star in the forthcoming Indiana Jones 4, due to be released in 2008.

Private life

Allen married actor Kale Browne (who, incidentally, portrayed Christa McAuliffe's husband, Steven, in Challenger) in 1988 and had Nicholas, her first child, in 1990. Since his birth, Allen has done smaller film roles and TV films to concentrate on raising Nicholas. She has also had an ongoing interest in knitting and in 2003 started her own textile company, Karen Allen-Fiber Arts in Lenox, Massachusetts. She also teaches acting at Simon's Rock College of Bard.

References

Footnotes

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