Karen Allen, 71, adventured with Indiana Jones for the lost Ark and a crystal skull, opened her heart to a penny-pinching Ebenezer, and carried the baby of an alien.
But, it was a human baby, her son Nicholas who was born in 1990, that inspired her move from Hollywood, allowing the film and stage actor to focus on her most important role, a mother.
After appearing in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008, where she reprised her role as the brassy Marion Ravenwood, the love interest of the title character played by Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, now 71, stepped away from the spotlight when she was at the height of her career.
In 1981 she starred in Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981, a touchstone film that’s had a significant impact on popular culture. She also appeared in Starman (1984), where she played the human who was swooned by an alien, that cloned the body of her deceased husband, Jeff Bridges. In 1988, she starred in Scrooged, with Bill Murray as Ebenezer, a film that decades later is still a Christmas cult classic.
“As wonderful a script as it was, we got to play around because Bill is a comedian, essentially, who loves to constantly tinker with what was written. I hadn’t had that kind of experience before,” Allen said of working with Murray, a Hollywood legend known for roles in the Ghostbusters franchise, Groundhog Day (1993), Kingpin (1996) and as Bosley in 2000’s Charlie’s Angels.
John Forsythe, who co-starred in Scrooged as the first ghost who visited Murray’s character, voiced Charlie, the man in the box, in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003), which was his last role before he died.
Unlike most of her co-stars, Allen, the star of The Glass Menagerie that was directed by Paul Newman, never planned on being a film star.
When she was 17, she studied apparel design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, where she was also exposed to theater.
“I literally walked into that theater one person and walked out another,” she said of her first visit to the theater in 1971. “It was not like watching a performance–it was like witnessing a profound experience. I said, ‘I don’t know what that was, what they were doing, but I want to start doing it tomorrow.”’
After changing schools to The Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in New York City, Allen saw a call for actors, an audition that landed her in the leading role of Katy in 1978’s Animal House.
In an interview with People, Allen, who has also appeared on Broadway, said, “I was 22 and I had imagined I would just be a theater actor and live in New York. Films, to me, seemed like 3,000 miles away.”
But those miles were quickly traveled for Allen, whose performance in National Lampoon’s Animal House film captured the interest of Steven Spielberg, who was working with George Lucas, and looking for the perfect Marion Ravenwood for his upcoming film, Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Speaking about the 40th anniversary of the multiple award-winning Raiders, Allen revelled in the excitement of starring in one of the most successful film franchises of all time: “It’s extraordinary! The fact that people are still seeing the film, talking about the film, having an interest in the film, it’s amazing.” Allen said, adding that “It’s amazing, and wonderful. It’s just one of those films that seems like it gets passed from generation to generation, and it stayed very beloved.”
In 1990, Allen had her son Nicholas, whom she shares with ex husband Kale Browne, of One Life to Live, whom she divorced in 1998.
Wanting to be a present mother, she started taking smaller roles, allowing her to be a more hands-on mother.
“I came to having to make some very tough decisions at a certain point in my life that had really to do with my son,” Allen said. “When you have a child, you can’t pull him in and out of school all the time.”
After having Nicholas, she circled back to her love of textiles, and opened her own store, Karen Allen Fiber Arts, in Barrington, MA. The shop features her cashmere knit designs, along with textile-oriented clothing and accessories from around the world.
“I just felt like I had to create a life for myself where I was more independent,” she told the LA Times about her new career with textiles. “Where what I was doing in my life was so interesting I could literally put my whole acting life on the back burner because I was so fascinated by what was right in front of me. And that was the only thing that felt healthy to me. Short of that, I felt like somebody who was waiting for the phone to ring.”
Allen, who has a longstanding relationship with the local Berkshire Theater Group, is still acting and directing stage productions.
And Nicholas Browne, now 33, won the Food Network’s Chopped in 2016 and works as a private chef in the Berkshires.
Though Allen said she “would certainly love to be a part of” the soon-to-be-released Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, both her and Shia LaBeouf, who played the son of Indiana and Marion in Crystal Skull, were overlooked.
Harrison Ford, who also played Hans Solo in another timeless major film franchise, Star Wars, is again giving life to the globetrotting hero in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, that hits theaters on June 30, 2023.
We love watching Karen Allen in all of her films, but we understand that being a mom comes first!
And it turns out her decision to be a hands-on mom to Nicholas Browne was a great decision!
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