Where Is She Now: Karen Allen (Actress) as Marion Ravenwood - Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Updated: 12/21/07
Name: Karen Allen
Born: October 5, 1951, Carrollton, Illinois
Claim To Fame: Karen made her major film debut in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) and Hollywood took notice. Her next big break came in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) where she created the role of "Marion Ravenwood".
Family Life: Kale Browne (1 May 1988 - 1997) (divorced) 1 son.
Son, Nicholas, born on September 14th 1990.
Lived with musician Stephen Bishop.
Info: Born in rural southern Illinois, Karen spent her first 10 years traveling around the country with her mother, her FBI agent father, and two sisters. At 17, after graduating from high school, Karen moved to New York to study art and design. She later attended the University of Maryland and spent time traveling through South and Central America. In 1974 Karen joined a theatre group and 3 years later moved back to New York and studied with the Lee Strasberg Institute.
Trivia: Overcame temporary blindness caused by Kerato Conjunctivitis in 1978. She later won major theatre awards for playing a blind woman in "Monday Before the Miracle" and "Miracle Worker, The".
Considered for the role of Princess Leia Organa in Star Wars, later cast in the George Lucas-produced Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Studied in the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute.
Attended the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York City at the age of seventeen to study apparel design but her life took a different course after encountering the experimental theater of Jerzy Grotowski's Polish Theatre Laboratory.
In 1995 she founded the Berkshire Mountain Yoga in Massachussets.
Where Is She Now: An accomplished hand knitting fanatic, Karen runs her own knitwear design studio, "Karen Allen Fiber Arts" that she started in 2004 in Massachussets.
Currently reprising her role as Marion Ravenwood in the fourth installment of the Indiana Jones series with Harrison Ford and director Steven Spielberg. This newest installment is filming at locations across the globe. The movie is due to be released Memorial Day in 2008.
