Early life

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.

Career

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.

Her career-changing role came with the blockbuster hit Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), directed by Steven Spielberg, in which she played the feisty heroine Marion Ravenwood, love interest of Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford). Allen won a Saturn Award for Best Actress for her performance. After a few minor films, including leading roles in the dramatic thriller Split Image (1982), directed by Ted Kotcheff and the Paris-set romantic drama Until September (1984), directed by Richard Marquand as well as other stage appearances, she co-starred with Jeff Bridges in the science fiction film Starman (1984).

Allen debuted on Broadway in the 1982 production The Monday After The Miracle. In 1983, she played the lead in the off-Broadway play Extremities, a physically demanding role about a would-be rape victim who turns the tables on her attacker. She often took breaks from movie roles to concentrate on stage acting; Allen appeared as Laura in the Paul Newman-directed film version of the Tennessee Williams play The Glass Menagerie, with John Malkovich and Joanne Woodward, in 1987.

In 1988, Allen returned to the big screen as Bill Murray's long-lost love, Claire, in the Christmas comedy Scrooged. In 1990, she portrayed the doomed crew member Christa McAuliffe in the television movie Challenger, based on the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Subsequently, she appeared in Spike Lee's Malcolm X (1992), in a small supporting role in The Perfect Storm (2000) and In the Bedroom (2001). She made guest appearances on television's Law & Order (1996) and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2001). She also starred in the short-lived series The Road Home (1994) and portrayed Dr. Clare Burton in the video game Ripper (1996). In 2014 she played the role of Betty Lowe in "Unfinished Business" the 13th episode of the 4th season of the CBS police procedural drama Blue Bloods.

Allen reprised her best-known role as Marion Ravenwood for the 2008 sequel Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, 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.

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.

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 began appearing in Terrence McNally's Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune for the Berkshire Theater Group.

Personal life

Allen was married to singer-songwriter Stephen Bishop for a short time in the early 1980s. In 1988, Allen married actor Kale Browne and gave birth to a son, Nicholas, in 1990. The couple divorced in 1998.

Following the birth of her son, Allen accepted smaller roles in TV and films in order to concentrate on raising Nicholas. She developed an affinity for knitting, and in 2003 started her own textile company, Karen Allen Fiber Arts, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The company sells items Allen knits herself, using a Japanese-made knitting machine. For her work in the textile arts, she was awarded an honorary master's degree from The Fashion Institute of Technology in 2009. Allen also teaches acting at Bard College at Simon's Rock, located in Great Barrington. She currently lives in Monterey, Massachusetts. She also teaches yoga.

Filmography

Movies
Year	Title	Role
1978	National Lampoon's Animal House	Katy
	Lovey: A Circle of Children, Part II	Elizabeth
1979	Manhattan	Television Actor #2
	The Wanderers	Nina
1980	Cruising	Nancy
	A Small Circle of Friends	Jessica Bloom
1981	Raiders of the Lost Ark	Marion Ravenwood
1982	Shoot the Moon	Sandy
	Split Image	Rebecca/Amy
1984	Until September	Mo Alexander
	Starman	Jenny Hayden
1987	Terminus	Gus
	The Glass Menagerie	Laura Wingfield
1988	Backfire	Mara McAndrew
	Scrooged	Claire Phillips
1989	Animal Behavior	Alex Bristow
1990	Challenger	Christa McAuliffe
	Secret Weapon	Ruth
1991	Sweet Talker	Julie Maguire
1992	The Turning	Glory Lawson
	Malcolm X	Miss Dunne
1993	The Sandlot	Scott's Mom
	Rapture	Georgianne Corcoran
	King of the Hill	Miss Mathey
	Voyage	Catherine "Kit" Norvell
	Ghost in the Machine	Terry Munroe
1996	Hostile Advances: The Kerry Ellison Story	Margaret
1997	'Til There Was You	Betty Dawkan
	All the Winters That Have Been	Helen Raven
1998	Falling Sky	Resse Nicholson
1999	The Basket	Bessie Emery
2000	Wind River	Martha
	The Perfect Storm	Melissa Brown
2001	In the Bedroom	Marla Keyes
	My Horrible Year!	Belinda Faulkner
	World Traveler	Delores
2003	Briar Patch	Butcher Lee
2004	Poster Boy	Eunice Kray
	When Will I Be Loved	Alexandra Barrie
2008	Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull	Marion Ravenwood
2009	A Dog Year	Paula (voice)
2010	White Irish Drinkers	Margaret
2010	November Christmas	Claire
2012	The Tin Star	Eliza Flynn
2015	Bad Hurt	Elaine Kendall

[ Source: Wikipedia ]