Karen Allen
| Karen Allen | |
|---|---|
Karen Allen at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival.
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| Born |
Karen Jane Allen October 5, 1951 Carrollton, Illinois, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1977–present |
| Spouse(s) |
Kale Browne (m. 1988; div. 1998) Stephen Bishop |
| Children | Nicholas (b. 1990) |
Kale Browne (m. 1988; div. 1998)
Karen Jane Allen (born October 5, 1951) is an American actress. She is best known for her performances as Marion Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), along with other film work.
Allen was born in Carrollton, in rural western Illinois, the daughter of Ruth Patricia (née Howell), a teacher, and Carroll Thompson Allen, an FBI agent. She is of English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh descent. 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. 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. 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. She later attended the University of Maryland, College Park for a year and a half, and spent time traveling through South and Central America. In 1974, Allen joined Shakespeare & Company in Massachusetts. Three years later, she moved back to New York City and studied at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute.
Allen made her major film debut in 1978, 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 and Sid's first wife Susan Philby.
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