Karen Allen

Actress Karen Allen is most well known for her parts in the award-winning movie Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and television's National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). She made her Broadway debut in The Monday After the Miracle (1982) for which she won a Theatre World Award (1983) as Best New Actress. Other stage credits include The Miracle Worker, Extremeties, The Glass Menagerie, As You Like It, The Country Girl, and others, at numerous venues from Charleston, South Carolina, to Montclair, New Jersey, to Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Born Karen Jane Allen on October 5, 1951, in rural Carrollton, Illinois, she is the daughter of FBI's Carroll T. Allen and schoolteacher Patricia A. Howell. She graduated from DuVal High School in Glenn Dale, MD, in 1969. She studied design at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, ran a boutique, wrote short stories, lived alone in Jamaica for five months, and drove from Mexico to Peru with friends who were filming a documentary on South American Indians. Karen also took some classes at George Washington University (1974-76) and the University of Maryland.

On May 1, 1988, Karen married soap opera star Kale Browne (nee David Charles Browne) (Another World's Michael Hudson 1986-1997). Their son, Nicholas, was born on September 14, 1990. Kale and Karen divorced in 1997.

In addition to acting, Karen sings and plays the guitar, piano, and harmonica. In 1995 she founded her own yoga center, Berkshire Mountain Yoga. Several years ago Karen began her own clothing label Imagine for which she designs and knits sweaters, hats, and scarves. She teaches advanced knitting, sweater design and multi-color knitting at schools in upstate New York and western Massachusetts.

Karen has moved back to Manhattan to pursue her acting career full time. She has been busy with stage roles and appears in four up-coming films: World Traveler, Briar Patch, The Shallow End and Shaka Zulu. She also completed a screenplay based on Walker Percy's novel The Second Coming.

Karen Allen's Awards and Honors: 1988 - Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female for The Glass Menagerie

1983 - Selected as one of the 10 Most Beautiful Women in America by Harper's Bazaar Magazine

1983 - Theatre World Award for Best New Actress, from Theatre World Magazine, for her role in Monday After the Miracle

1982 - Saturn Award for Best Actress, from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. She won over such actresses as Linda Hamilton (The Terminator) and Daryl Hannah (Splash).