AKA Karen Blanche Ziegler

Born: 1-Jul-1942
Birthplace: Park Ridge, IL

Gender: Female
Religion: See Note [1]
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Actor

Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Five Easy Pieces

Karen Black was a child prodigy, reading past the high school level by fourth grade. She entered Northwestern University at the age of 15, but dropped out at 17. She moved to New York, worked as a waitress, hung out with artsy types, and had a small role in a raunchy cheesecake film called The Prime Time, also known as Hell Kitten. She eventually studied drama with Lee Strasberg, and at 19 she made her Broadway debut in the comedy Take Her, She's Mine with Art Carney and Elizabeth Ashley. Her first serious film was an early Francis Ford Coppola comedy-drama, You're a Big Boy Now with Rip Torn, Geraldine Page, and Black's first serious lover, actor Peter Kastner, who went on to play Donald Sutherland's professor role in the horrendous sitcomization of Animal House.

She had a small part in a short-lived 1967 sitcom, The Second Hundred Years, but her most recognized films came with Easy Rider with Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper and Five Easy Pieces with Jack Nicholson. For the latter, she received her only Oscar nomination. After Five Easy Pieces, though, Black seemed to pick projects by rolling dice. For every good film (The Great Gatsby with Robert Redford, or Robert Altman's Nashville), she seemed determined to make three odd art films or simple stinkers like The Pyx with Christopher Plummer, Ace Up My Sleeve with Omar Sharif, Little Laura and Big John with Fabian, or Trilogy of Terror.

In the oft-satirized Airport 1975 with Charlton Heston and George Kennedy, she played a stewardess who had to fly the plane in an emergency. But after appearing in Hitchcock's last film, Family Plot, and the cheesy conspiracy thriller Capricorn One with Elliott Gould and James Brolin, Black has been mostly confined to the horror genre, even becoming something of a "brand name" for a certain kind of horror movie -- compare Burnt Offerings, It's Alive III, Night Angel, Evil Spirits, Dead Girls Don't Tango, Auntie Lee's Meat Pies, Soulkeeper, House of 100 Corpses, and Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering.

In the late 1990s, Black was credited as co-writer for Tons of Trouble (a poorly-received comedy about a wayward elephant), and the horrendous Sean Young romantic uncomedy Men. She also co-wrote and produced a barely-released thriller titled Charades with C. Thomas Howell.

    High School: Lafayette Jefferson High School, Lafayette, IN
    University: Northwestern University (dropped out)

    Converted to Scientology (recanted)
    Golden Globe 1971 for Five Easy Pieces
    Golden Globe 1975 for The Great Gatsby
    Risk Factors: Smoking

    FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
    Firecracker (3-Oct-2004)
    Curse of the Forty-Niner (23-Sep-2003)
    Paris (7-May-2003)
    House of 1000 Corpses (13-Mar-2003)
    Teknolust (12-Sep-2002)
    Soulkeeper (13-Oct-2001)
    Gypsy 83 (6-Jun-2001)
    Red Dirt (17-Mar-2000)
    The Independent (12-Mar-2000) Herself
    The Underground Comedy Movie (07-May-1999)
    Charades (17-Dec-1998)
    I Woke Up Early the Day I Died (13-Sep-1998)
    Conceiving Ada (10-Sep-1997)
    Dogtown (1997)
    Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering (8-Oct-1996)
    Crimetime (Aug-1996)
    Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City (8-May-1993) Herself
    The Player (3-Apr-1992) Herself
    The Legend of the Rollerblade 7 (1992)
    The Double 0 Kid (1992)
    Bound and Gagged: A Love Story (1992)
    Final Judgement (1992)
    Children of the Night (6-Sep-1991)
    Rubin and Ed (1991)
    Zapped Again! (14-Apr-1990)
    Mirror, Mirror (1990)
    Homer & Eddie (17-Aug-1989)
    The Invisible Kid (30-Mar-1988)
    It's Alive III: Island of the Alive (4-Dec-1987)
    Invaders from Mars (06-Jun-1986)
    Cut and Run (8-Aug-1985)
    Savage Dawn (1985)
    Martin's Day (1984)
    Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? (10-Sep-1983)
    Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)
    Killer Fish (7-Dec-1979)
    Mr. Horn (1-Feb-1979)
    The Squeeze (25-Oct-1978)
    In Praise of Older Women (14-Sep-1978)
    Capricorn One (Jun-1978)
    Burnt Offerings (25-Aug-1976)
    Family Plot (9-Apr-1976)
    Nashville (11-Jun-1975)
    The Day of the Locust (7-May-1975)
    Airport 1975 (18-Oct-1974)
    Law and Disorder (9-Oct-1974)
    The Great Gatsby (26-Mar-1974)
    Rhinocerous (21-Jan-1974)
    The Outfit (Oct-1973)
    Portnoy's Complaint (19-Jun-1972)
    Cisco Pike (14-Jan-1972)
    Born to Win (1-Dec-1971)
    A Gunfight (25-Aug-1971)
    Drive, He Said (13-Jun-1971)
    Five Easy Pieces (11-Sep-1970)
    Easy Rider (14-Jul-1969)
    Hard Contract (30-Apr-1969)
    You're a Big Boy Now (9-Dec-1966)

Official Website:
http://www.karenblack.net/

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