Karen Black - Biography

Karen Black (born July 1, 1939) is an American actress, screenwriter, singer, and songwriter. She is noted for appearing in such films as Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Great Gatsby, Rhinoceros, The Day of the Locust, Nashville, Airport 1975, and Alfred Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot. Over the course of her career, she won two Golden Globe Awards (out of three nominations), and an Academy Award nomination in 1970 for Best Supporting Actress, among numerous other honors.

Early life

Black was born as Karen Blanche Ziegler to a Jewish family in Park Ridge, Illinois, in suburban Chicago, the daughter of Elsie Mary (née Reif), a writer of several prize-winning children's novels, and Norman Arthur Ziegler. Her paternal grandfather was Arthur Ziegler, a classical musician and the first violinist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Her sister is actress Gail Brown. She attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, for two years, having commenced university studies in 1954, aged 15. She then moved to New York where she appeared in a number of Off-Broadway productions, as well as moonlighting on the female professional wrestling circuit.

Career

Black began her film career in 1959 with a small role in The Prime Time.

She had previously written and sung the theme song and supporting songs for The Pyx (1973).

In 1970, Black appeared as Rayette, the waitress girlfriend of Jack Nicholson, in the film Five Easy Pieces, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award.

She starred as Nancy Pryor, the stewardess who is forced to fly the plane, in the disaster film Airport 1975. That same year, she played multiple roles in the televised anthology film Trilogy of Terror. The segments, all written by suspense writer Richard Matheson, were named after the women involved in the plot: a plain college professor who seduces a student ("Julie"), a pair of sisters who squabble over their father's inheritance ("Millicent and Therese"), and, most chillingly, the lonely recipient of a cursed Zuni fetish that comes to life and pursues her relentlessly ("Amelia").

During the next two years, Black had leading roles for famed directors as an aspiring Hollywood actress in John Schlesinger's The Day of the Locust, as a country singer in Robert Altman's Nashville and as a kidnapper in what turned out to be Alfred Hitchcock's last film, Family Plot. She also co-starred with Bette Davis in a horror film, Burnt Offerings.

In April 2009, Black reunited with director Steve Balderson for Stuck! – an homage to film noir women-in-prison dramas, which co-starred Mink Stole, Pleasant Gehman and The Go-Go's Jane Wiedlin. Black stars also in the John Landis-produced 2010 thriller Some Guy Who Kills People.

In 2009, Black appeared on Cass McCombs' song Dreams-Come-True-Girl from the album Catacombs.

Personal life

Black has been married four times, first to Charles Black from 1955 to 1962, then to Robert Burton, who played her student in the TV movie Trilogy of Terror, from April 18, 1973 to October 1974. Black was next married to actor and screenwriter L. M. Kit Carson on July 4, 1975 and subsequently divorced; their son is actor Hunter Carson. She married Stephen Eckelberry on September 27, 1987 and they remain married. They have an adopted daughter, Celine.

She has been a Scientologist since the 1970s and, despite some 2006 rumors to the contrary, she and her husband are still active.

Filmography

• The Prime Time (1960)
• You're a Big Boy Now (1966)
• Hard Contract (1969)
• Easy Rider (1969)
• Hastings Corner (1970)
• Five Easy Pieces (1970)
• Drive, He Said (1971)
• A Gunfight (1971)
• Born to Win (1971)
• Cisco Pike (1972)
• Portnoy's Complaint (1972)
• Little Laura and Big John (1973)
• The Pyx (1973)
• The Outfit (1973)
• Ghost Story/Circle of Fear (1973)
• Rhinoceros (1974)
• The Great Gatsby (1974)
• Law and Disorder (1974)
• Airport 1975 (1974)
• Trilogy of Terror (1975)
• The Day of the Locust (1975)
• Nashville (1975)
• Ace Up My Sleeve (1976)
• Family Plot (1976)
• Burnt Offerings (1976)
• The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver (1977)
• 1922
• Because He's My Friend (1978)
• Capricorn One (1978)
• In Praise of Older Women (1978)
• The Squeeze (1978)
• Mr. Horn (1979)
• Killer Fish (1979)
• Power (1980)
• Where the Ladies Go (1980)
• The Last Word (1980)
• Police Story: Confessions of a Lady Cop (1980)
• Separate Ways (1981)
• Gräset sjunger (1981)
• Chanel Solitaire (1981)
• La donna giusta (1982)
• Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)
• Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? (1983)
• A Stroke of Genius (1984)
• Growing Pains (1984)
• The Blue Man (1985)
• Martin's Day (1985)
• Inferno in diretta (1985)
• Savage Dawn (1985)
• Invaders from Mars (1986)
• Flight of the Spruce Goose (1986)
• It's Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987)
• Hostage (1987)
• Platinum Blonde (1988)
• The Legendary Life of Ernest Hemingway (1988)
• The Invisible Kid (1988)
• Dixie Lanes (1988)
• Judgement (1989)
• Out of the Dark (1989)
• Homer and Eddie (1989)
• Evil Spirits (1990)
• Mirror, Mirror (1990)
• Fatal Encounter (1990)
• The Children (1990)
• Club Fed (1990 film) (1990)
• Overexposed (1990)
• Zapped Again! (1990)
• Twisted Justice (1990)
• Night Angel (1990)
• The Roller Blade Seven (1991)
• Rubin and Ed (1991)
• The Killer's Edge (1991)
• Children of the Night (1991)
• Quiet Fire (1991)
• Haunting Fear (1991)
• Return of the Roller Blade Seven (1992)

• Final Judgement (1992)
• Legend of the Roller Blade Seven (1992)
• Dead Girls Don't Tango (1992)
• Bound and Gagged: A Love Story (1992)
• The Double 0 Kid (1992)
• Caged Fear (1992)
• Cries of Silence (1993)
• Auntie Lee's Meat Pies (1993)
• Tuesday Never Comes (1993)
• The Trust (1993)
• Dark Blood (1993) (unfinished)
• Plan 10 from Outer Space (1994)
• Too Bad About Jack (1994)
• The Wacky Adventures of Dr. Boris and Nurse Shirley (1995)
• Starstruck (1995)
• Dinosaur Valley Girls (1996)
• Angelo a New York, Un (1996)
• Movies Money Murder (1996)
• Every Minute Is Goodbye (1996)
• Crimetime (1996)
• Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering (1996)
• Dogtown (1997)
• Modern Rhapsody (1997)
• Malaika (1997)
• Conceiving Ada (1997)
• Men (1997)
• Waiting for Dr. MacGuffin (1998)
• Fallen Arches (1998)
• Light Speed (1998)
• Stripping for Jesus (1998)
• Invisible Dad (1998)
• I Woke Up Early the Day I Died (1998)
• Sugar: The Fall of the West (1998)
• Stir (1998)
• My Neighbor's Daughter (1998)
• Bury the Evidence (1998)
• Charades (1998)
• Decoupage 2000: Return of the Goddess (1999)
• Paradise Cove (1999)
• Mascara (1999)
• The Underground Comedy Movie (1999)
• Oliver Twisted (2000)
• Inviati speciali (2000)
• The Donor (2000)
• Red Dirt (2000)
• Gypsy 83 (2001)
• Hard Luck (2001)
• Soulkeeper (2001)
• Teknolust (2002)
• Buttleman (2002)
• A Light in the Darkness (2002)
• Paris (2003)
• Summer Solstice (2003)
• Curse of the Forty-Niner (2003)
• House of 1000 Corpses (2003)
• America Brown (2004)
• Birth of Industry (2004)
• Firecracker (2005)
• Dr. Rage (2005)
• Carma (2005)
• My Suicidal Sweetheart (2005)
• Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula (2005)
• Whitepaddy (2006)
• Hollywood Dreams (2006)
• Read You Like a Book (2006)
• Suffering Man's Charity (2007)
• One Long Night (2007)
• Contamination (2008)
• The Blue Tooth Virgin (2008)
• Watercolors (2008)
• First Time Long Time (2009)
• A Single Woman (2009)
• Double Duty (2009)
• Irene in Time (2009)
• Katie Q (2009)
• Stuck! (2010)
• Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! (2010, television - Adult Swim)

Trivia

According to Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, Karen is the all time highest rated female "Center" of Hollywood.

In the Heat of the Night - tv

External links

• Stuck! movie site
• Podcast interview March 2007
• Karen Black - The Terror Trap