Karen Allen, "Marion Ravenwood"

September 25, 2009 Allen started her acting career when she joined the Washington Theater Laboratory Company in Washington, D.C. in 1974. Two years later, she made her film debut in the award-winning short film "the Whidjitmaker." The following year, Allen moved back to New York to study at the Lee Strasberg Institute and, over the years, has appeared on and off-Broadway in such productions as "Extremities," The Country Girl," "The Miracle Worker," "Speaking in Tongues" and "Miss Julie."

Her studies paid off in 1978 when she made her major film debut as Katy in National Lampoon's "Animal House," which became one of the biggest hits of that year. She followed this with roles in Philip Kaufman's "The Wanderers" (1979), "Cruising" (1980) and Woody Allen's "Manhattan" (1979) before her performance in Rob Cohen's 1980 drama "A Small Circle of Friends" caught the attention of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg who cast her as the fiesty bar owner Marion Ravenwood in "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

She followed that with her 1982 Broadway debut in "The Monday After the Miracle," for which she wont he Theatre World Award for Best New Actress. In 1984, Allen starred in "Until September and John Carpenter's "Starman," opposite Jeff Bridges.

Allen won the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films' Saturn Award for Best Actress in 1982 for "Raiders" and was nominated again in 1985 for "Starman." In 1988, she was nominated for Best Supporting Female at the Independent Spirit Awards and for Best Foreign Actress at Spain's Saint Jordi Awards in Barcelona for her performance in Paul Newman's screen adaptation of "The Glass Menagerie."

Allen's more recent credits include "The Basket" (1999) and Wolfgang Petersen's "The Perfect Storm" (2000) in which she co-starred with George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and Diane Lane. She also appeared in "Shaka Zulu: The Citadel" (2001) for television and in Todd Field's acclaimed drama "In the Bedroom".

Her most recent film, "Poster Boy" was featured at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival.

Allen, who has a son, Nick- born in 1990, teaches and directs theater at Simon's Rock College of Band. She also founded Berkshire Mountain Yoga, started a knitwear design studio in 2003 called Karen Allen- Fiber Arts Studio and, in 2005, opened a knitwear design shop in Great Barrington, MA, Karen Allen Fiber Arts.

Meet Karen Allen
Q&A and Autograph Signing
Hollywood Palms Cinema
Naperville
Friday & Saturday
7pm & 10pm showings of "Raiders of the Lost Ark"
630-428-5800 www.atriptothemovies.com

Hollywood Blvd Theater
Woodridge
5pm & 8pm Sunday
630-427-1880