Karen Jane Allen (born October 5, 1951) is an American actress. She played Marion Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). Allen has also had roles in films such as National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), The Wanderers (1979), Cruising (1980), Shoot the Moon (1982), Starman (1984), Scrooged (1988), The Sandlot (1993), The Perfect Storm (2000) and Poster Boy (2004).

Biography

Allen was married to singer-songwriter Stephen Bishop for a short time in the early 1980s. In 1988, Allen married actor Kale Browne and gave birth to a son, Nicholas, in 1990. The couple divorced in 1998.

Following the birth of her son, Allen accepted smaller roles in TV and films in order to concentrate on raising Nicholas. She developed an affinity for knitting, and in 2003 started her own textile company, Karen Allen Fiber Arts, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The company sells items Allen knits herself, using a Japanese-made knitting machine. For her work in the textile arts, she was awarded an honorary master's degree from The Fashion Institute of Technology in 2009. Allen also teaches acting at Bard College at Simon's Rock, located in Great Barrington. She currently lives in Monterey, Massachusetts. She also teaches yoga.

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