Karen Allen
Allen at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival
Born	Karen Jane Allen (1951-10-05) October 5, 1951 (age 60) Carrollton, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1978–present
Spouse	Kale Browne (m. 1988–1998) «start: (1988)–end+1: (1999)»"Marriage: Kale Browne to Karen Allen" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Karen_Allen) (one son)

Karen Jane Allen (born October 5, 1951) is an American actress best known for her role as Marion Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008).^[1] Allen has also had roles in films including National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), The Wanderers (1979), Cruising (1980), Starman (1984), Scrooged (1988), The Sandlot (1993) and Poster Boy (2004).

Early life[link]

Allen was born in Carrollton, in rural western Illinois, the daughter of Patricia Allen (née Howell), a teacher, and Carroll Thompson Allen, an FBI agent.^[2] She is of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh descent.^[3] Allen spent her first 10 years traveling around the country with her parents and two sisters.^{[citation needed]} After she graduated from DuVal Senior High School, in Lanham, Maryland, at 17, she moved to New York City to study art and design at Fashion Institute of Technology.^{[citation needed]} She later attended the University of Maryland, College Park, and spent time traveling through South and Central America.^{[citation needed]} In 1974, Allen joined Shakespeare & Company in Massachusetts and, three years later, moved back to New York City and studied at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute.^{[citation needed]}

Career[link]

In 1978, Allen made her major film debut, in National Lampoon's Animal House. Her next two film 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. She also appeared (as a guest star) in the 1979 pilot episode of the long-running CBS series Knots Landing and played Annie Fairgate, the daughter of Don Murray's character Sid Fairgate.

Allen at the 2006 Dallas Comic Con

Her career-changing role came with the blockbuster hit Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), directed by Steven Spielberg, in which she played the feisty heroine Marion Ravenwood, love interest of Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford). Allen won a Saturn Award for Best Actress for her performance.^[4] After a few minor films, including leading roles in the dramatic thriller Split Image (1982), directed by Ted Kotcheff and the Paris-set romantic drama Until September (1984), directed by Richard Marquand as well as other stage appearances, she co-starred with Jeff Bridges in the science-fiction film Starman (1984).

Allen debuted on Broadway in the 1982 production The Monday After The Miracle.^{[citation needed]} In 1983, she played the lead in the off-Broadway play Extremities, a physically demanding role about a would-be rape victim who turns the tables on her attacker.^{[citation needed]} She often took breaks from movie roles to concentrate on stage acting, although Allen appeared as Laura in the Paul Newman directed film version of the Tennessee Williams play The Glass Menagerie, with John Malkovich and Joanne Woodward, in 1987.^{[citation needed]}

In 1988, Allen returned to the big screen as Bill Murray's long-lost love, Claire, in the Christmas comedy Scrooged. In 1990, she portrayed the doomed crew member Christa McAuliffe in the controversial^{[citation needed]} television movie Challenger, based on the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Subsequently, she appeared in Spike Lee's Malcolm X (1992), in a small supporting role in The Perfect Storm (2000) and In the Bedroom (2001). She made guest appearances on television's Law & Order (1996) and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2001). She had also starred in the short-lived series The Road Home (1994) and portrayed Dr. Clare Burton in the video game Ripper (1996).

Allen reprised her best-known role as Marion Ravenwood for the 2008 sequel Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, in which she renews her relationship with Indiana Jones and reveals to him that they have a son named Henry Jones III, who named himself Mutt Williams, played by Shia LaBeouf.

Personal life[link]

In 1988, Allen married actor Kale Browne and gave birth to a son Nicholas in 1990. The couple divorced in 1998.^{[citation needed]}

Following the birth of her son, she accepted smaller roles in TV and films in order to concentrate on raising Nicholas.^{[citation needed]} Given her affinity for knitting, in 2003, she started her own textile company, called "Karen Allen Fiber Arts", in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, for which she was awarded an honorary master's degree from The Fashion Institute of Technology, in its 2009 commencement exercises.^{[citation needed]} Allen also teaches acting at Bard College at Simon's Rock, located in Great Barrington.^[5] She currently lives in Monterey, Massachusetts. She also teaches yoga.^{[citation needed]}

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Karen Allen

• Official website
• Karen Allen at the Internet Movie Database
• Karen Allen at the Internet Broadway Database
• Karen Allen at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Karen Allen at AllRovi
• New York Times: A Night Out With | Karen Allen, Only for You, Dr. Jones
• Artist Direct Interview by Drew Tewksbury October 17, 2008
• Karen Allen on The Graham Norton Show, BBC Television, UK, November 2008