Karen Black

Overview

Born
July 1, 1939 · Park Ridge, Illinois, USA
Died
August 8, 2013 · Los Angeles, California, USA (ampullary cancer)
Birth name
Karen Blanche Ziegler
Nickname
- The Hardest Working Woman in Hollywood
Height
5′ 7″ (1.70 m)

Biography

Karen entered Northwestern University at 18 and left two years later. She studied under Lee Strasberg in New York and worked in a number of off-Broadway roles. She made a critically acclaimed debut on Broadway in 1965 in "The Playroom". Her first big film role was in You're a Big Boy Now (1966), directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Shortly after wards, she appeared as Marcia in the TV series The Second Hundred Years (1967).

The film that made her a star was Easy Rider (1969), where she worked with Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and a supporting actor named Jack Nicholson. She appeared with Nicholson again the next year when they starred in Five Easy Pieces (1970), which garnered an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe for Karen. Her roles mainly consisted of waitresses, hookers and women on the edge. Some of her later films were disappointments at the box office, but she did receive another Golden Globe for The Great Gatsby (1974). One role for which she is well remembered is that of the jewel thief in Alfred Hitchcock's last film, Family Plot (1976). Another is as the woman terrorized in her apartment by a murderous Zuni doll come to life in the well received TV movie Trilogy of Terror (1975). After a number of forgettable movies, she again won rave reviews for her role in Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982). Since then, her film career has been busy, but the quality of the films has been uneven.
- IMDb mini biography by: Tony Fontana <tony.fontana@spacebbs.com>

Family

Spouses
Children
Parents
Relatives

Trademarks

Crossed eyes

Trivia

Diagnosed with ampullary cancer in November 2010 and had a third of her pancreas immediately removed. Though declared cancer-free in 2011, had relapsed and underwent two operations in 2012.
Wrote the songs "Memphis" and "Rolling Stone" which she performed in character as country singer Connie White in the movie Nashville (1975). As a result she was nominated for a Grammy Award for Album of Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or Television Series.
Was married to actor Robert Burton at the time they filmed the cult TV-movie Trilogy of Terror (1975). Ms. Black initially turned the role down but eventually accepted when Robert was selected for a lead role in one of the three segments. Karen plays an English teacher and he plays an obsessed college student. The couple was already divorced after only little more than a year by the time the TV-movie premiered in March of 1975.
Launched her career as a playwright in May 2007 with the opening of "Missouri Waltz" in Los Angeles; Black starred in the play as well. The piece is conceived as a play with music, rather than a musical.
She has appeared in three films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970) and Nashville (1975).

Quotes

My God, there aren't any more movie stars, which is terrific with me, it's very healthy. A lot of love now occurs in the business, people helping each other to do good work, getting high on each other's success. Isn't that great?
[on the craft of acting] That's really what acting is: you imagine things, then you respond naturally to what you've imagined.
Every time you do a part you try to find out what it would really be like to be that person, no matter who she is.
[re Bob Rafelson, director of Five Easy Pieces (1970) and her character in it] Rafelson thought I might be too complex for Rayette, but I told him I'm essentially simple, that really everybody is essentially simple, that we are all just beings who, uh, be. Certainly Rayette can just be. dig her, she's not dumb, she's just not into thinking. I didn't have to know anybody like her to play her. I mean, I'm like her, in ways. Rayette enjoys things as she sees them, she doesn't have to add significances. She can just love the dog, love the cat. See? There are many things she does not know, but that's cool; she doesn't intrude on anybody else's trip. And she's going to survive. Do you understand me?
[on Alfred Hitchcock] We'd do limericks together. One day he pulled up his shirt to show me his belly-button - which he didn't have. He'd had an operation and when they sewed him up they took it away. His belly-button was gone!