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).
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]
Allen reprised her best-known role as Marion Ravenwood for the 2008 sequel Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,[10] 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. The film was a critical and commercial success.[15][16]
Allen starred in the American premiere of Jon Fosse's A Summer Day at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York City, which opened in October 2012.[17]
Allen has a long-standing relationship with the Berkshire Theater Group. It began in 1981, when she appeared in the play Two for the Seesaw at the Berkshire Theater Festival in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. She has also appeared in summer production of the nearby Williamstown Theater Festival. In August 2015, Allen directed Terrence McNally's Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune for the Berkshire Theater Group.[18] In 2016, Allen made her movie directing debut with the short film, A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud., based on the short story by Carson McCullers.[19] It won the Best International Short at the Manchester Film Festival in March 2017.[20] Allen played the lead role in 2017's Year by the Sea, a film based on The New York Times bestselling memoir by Joan Anderson.[21]
In 1988, Allen married actor Kale Browne and had a son, Nicholas, in 1990. The couple divorced in 1998.[23] Following the birth of her son, Allen accepted smaller roles in TV and films to concentrate on raising Nicholas.[17] Nicholas went on to become a personal chef and win a Chopped competition on the Food Network, aired December 22, 2016.[24][25][26]
She developed an affinity for knitting, and in 2003 started her own textile company, Karen Allen Fiber Arts, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The company has a store in Great Barrington that sells items Allen knits with a Japanese-made knitting machine[18] as well as other products made by compatible designers. For her work in the textile arts, she was awarded an honorary master's degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2009.[27] Allen also teaches acting at Bard College at Simon's Rock, located in Great Barrington.[28]
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