Karen Allen
Karen Jane Allen (born October 5, 1951)[1] is an American film and stage actress. She made her film debut in the comedy film Animal House (1978), which was soon followed by a small role in Woody Allen's romantic comedy-drama Manhattan (1979) and a co-lead role in Philip Kaufman's coming-of-age film The Wanderers (1979), before co-starring opposite Al Pacino in William Friedkin's crime thriller Cruising (1980).
Karen Allen
Actress
1974–present
Role of Marion Ravenwood in the Indiana Jones movies Raiders of the Lost Ark
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Dial of Destiny
1
Her critical and commercial breakthrough came when she portrayed Marion Ravenwood opposite Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), for which she won the Saturn Award for Best Actress. She later co-starred in Shoot the Moon (1982), Starman (1984), for which she was again nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Actress, and Scrooged (1988). She has also received recognition for her work in The Glass Menagerie (1987), Year by the Sea (2016), and Colewell (2019). She reprised her role as Marion Ravenwood in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023).
Early life[edit]
Allen was born on October 5, 1951, in Carrollton, Illinois,[2] to Ruth Patricia (née Howell) (1927–2020), a university professor, and Carroll Thompson Allen (1925–2015), an FBI agent.[3] She is of English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh descent.[4] Her father's job forced the family to move often. "I grew up moving almost every year and so I was always the new kid in school and always, in a way, was deprived of ever really having any lasting friendships", Allen said in 1987.[5] Although Allen says her father was very much involved in the family, she felt that she and her two sisters grew up in a very female-dominated household.[6]
After she graduated from DuVal High School, in Lanham, Maryland, at 17, she moved to New York City to study art and design at Fashion Institute of Technology for two years.[7] Allen later ran a boutique on the University of Maryland campus[8] and spent time traveling through South and Central Asia.[4] She attended George Washington University and began to study and perform with the experimental company, the Washington Theatre Laboratory, in Washington, D.C.[7] In 1974, Allen joined Shakespeare & Company in Massachusetts.[9] Three years later, she moved back to New York City and studied at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute.[4]