Karen Allen

Karen Jane Allen (born October 5, 1951) is an American film, television and stage actress. She made her film debut in the comedy film Animal House (1978), which was soon followed by a small role in Woody Allen's romantic comedy-drama Manhattan (1979) and a co-lead role in Philip Kaufman's coming-of-age film The Wanderers (1979), before co-starring opposite Al Pacino in William Friedkin's crime thriller Cruising (1980).

Allen's critical and commercial breakthrough came when she portrayed Marion Ravenwood opposite Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), for which she won the Saturn Award for Best Actress. She later co-starred in Shoot the Moon (1982), Starman (1984), for which she was again nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Actress, and Scrooged (1988).

Allen has also received recognition for her work in The Glass Menagerie (1987), Year by the Sea (2016), and Colewell (2019). She reprised her role as Marion Ravenwood in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023). Her stage work has included performances on Broadway, and she has directed both stage and film productions.

Allen was born on October 5, 1951, in Carrollton, Illinois, to Ruth Patricia (née Howell) (1927–2020), a university professor, and Carroll Thompson Allen (1925–2015), 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 for two years. Allen later ran a boutique on the University of Maryland campus and spent time traveling through South and Central Asia. She attended George Washington University and began to study and perform with the experimental company, the Washington Theatre Laboratory, in Washington, D.C. 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.

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. She had a small role as a television actor in Woody Allen's film Manhattan (1979), before being cast as the love interest of Al Pacino in William Friedkin's controversial film Cruising (1980).

Allen's career-changing role came with the blockbuster movie Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), directed by Steven Spielberg, in which she played Marion Ravenwood, the love interest of Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford). Allen won the 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 John Carpenter's science-fiction film Starman (1984). The film was a critical success, and later spawned the short-lived Starman television series in 1986. Allen's performance in the film earned her another nomination for the Saturn Award for Best Actress.

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 woman who turns the tables on a would-be rapist who attacks her. 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.