Karen Black

Karen Black, 0 open letters

About Karen Black
Karen Blanche Black (née Ziegler; July 1, 1939 – August 8, 2013) was an American actress, screenwriter, singer and songwriter. She is known for her appearances in such films as Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), The Great Gatsby, Rhinoceros and Airport 1975 (all 1974), The Day of the Locust and Nashville (both 1975), Alfred Hitchcock's final film Family Plot (1976), and Capricorn One (1978). Over the course of her career, she won two Golden Globe Awards (out of three nominations), and an Academy Award nomination in 1971 for Best Supporting Actress.


Contents


1 Early life
2 Career
3 Personal life
4 Death
5 Filmography
6 References
7 External links


Early life[edit]
Black was born as Karen Blanche Ziegler 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 Charles Ziegler, a classical musician and first violinist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Her sister is the actress Gail Brown. Black was of German, Bohemian (Czech) and Norwegian descent.
Career[edit]
Black (who took that surname from her first husband, Charles Black) began her acting career in 1959 with a small role in the B-film The Prime Time (released 1960).
Beginning in 1967, she appeared in guest roles in several television series, including The F.B.I., Run for Your Life, The Second Hundred Years, The Big Valley, The Iron Horse, Judd for the Defense and Mannix. One of her early roles was in Season 1, episode 10 (Log 132-The Producer) of the NBC series, Adam-12 as Susan Decker. In 1984-1985, she was cast as Sheila Sheinfeld in three episodes of another NBC series, E/R. She wrote and sang the theme song and supporting songs for The Pyx (1973).




with Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider (1969)


Her feature film career expanded in 1969, playing the role of an acid-tripping prostitute opposite Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in the iconic counterculture movie Easy Rider. 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 as Supporting Actress. Black played an unfaithful wife, Myrtle Wilson, in the 1974 version of The Great Gatsby. She starred as Nancy Pryor, the stewardess who is forced to fly the plane, in the disaster film Airport 1975 (1974). In the 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 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 as an aspiring Hollywood actress in John Schlesinger's The Day of the Locust (1975), as a country singer in Robert Altman's Nashville (also 1975) and as a kidnapper in what turned out to be Alfred Hitchcock's last film, Family Plot (1976). She also co-starred with Bette Davis in a horror film, Burnt Offerings (also 1976).
Her later career tailed off into numerous horror roles, but Black did gain and maintain a cult following.



She came along at just the right time, as American cinema was changing in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She didn't have a lacquered Hollywood look or demeanor. She seemed like a real person, and that was exactly what the young filmmakers whose careers were blossoming at the time were looking for. There was an honesty and a vulnerability about her that suited so many of the characters she played.
—Film critic and historian Leonard Maltin speaking about Karen Black in 2013

“
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In April 2009, Black worked with director Steve Balderson for Stuck! — an homage to film noir women-in-prison dramas, which co-starred Mink Stole, Pleasant Gehman and Jane Wiedlin of the The Go-Go's. Black also starred in John Landis' 2010 thriller, Some Guy Who Kills People. Later that year, Black appeared on Cass McCombs' song "Dreams-Come-True-Girl" from the album Catacombs.
Personal life[edit]




In 2010


Black married four times:

Charles Black, married in 1955 or 1960, sources vary; year of divorce unknown.
Robert Burton, an actor (who appeared alongside Black in Trilogy of Terror), from April 18, 1973 to October 1974.[10]
L. M. Kit Carson, an actor/screenwriter, on July 4, 1975. They had a son, actor Hunter Carson, and subsequently divorced.
Stephen Eckelberry, from September 27, 1987. They adopted a daughter, Celine.[10] The couple were active Scientologists.[11][12]

Death[edit]
After her final films were released in 2010, she was diagnosed with cancer and did not make any more public appearances. She had a portion of her pancreas removed that year and battled on with two further operations.[13] She was invited to attend the premiere of River Phoenix's last on-screen performance in the salvaged feature film Dark Blood, in which she had acted in a small part in the original early 1990s shoot. Black was unable to attend the event, held in the Netherlands in September 2012, due to her illness. [14]
On August 8, 2013, Black died in Los Angeles from ampullary cancer at age 74.[15] Actress Juliette Lewis paid tribute, saying "Karen Black was my mentor and a second mother to me. She inspired everyone she came in contact with."[16]
Filmography[edit]


You're a Big Boy Now (1966)
Hard Contract (1969)
Easy Rider (1969)
Five Easy Pieces (1970)
Drive, He Said (1971)
A Gunfight (1971)
Born to Win (1971)
Cisco Pike (1972)
Portnoy's Complaint (1972)
The Pyx (1973)
The Outfit (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)
Family Plot (1976)
Burnt Offerings (1976)
Capricorn One (1978)
In Praise of Older Women (1978)
The Squeeze (1978)
Mr. Horn (1979)
Killer Fish (1979)
Police Story: Confessions of a Lady Cop (1980)
Chanel Solitaire (1981)
Killing Heat (1981)
Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)
Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? (1983)
Bad Manners (aka: Growing Pains) (1984)
The Blue Man (1985)
Savage Dawn (1985)
Invaders from Mars (1986)
The Invisible Kid (1988)
Out of the Dark (1989)
Homer and Eddie (1989)
Mirror, Mirror (1990)
The Children (1990)
Club Fed (1990)
Zapped Again! (1990)
The Roller Blade Seven (1991)
Rubin and Ed (1991)
Children of the Night (1991)
Return of the Roller Blade Seven (1992)
The Double 0 Kid (1992)
Dark Blood (1993) (completed in 2012)
Plan 10 from Outer Space (1994)
Crimetime (1996)
Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering (1996)
Dogtown (1997)
Conceiving Ada (1997)
Fallen Arches (1998)
Charades (1998)
The Underground Comedy Movie (1999)
Red Dirt (2000)
Gypsy 83 (2001)
Teknolust (2002)
Buttleman (2002)
Summer Solstice (2003)
Curse of the Forty-Niner (2003)
House of 1000 Corpses (2003)
Firecracker (2005)
My Suicidal Sweetheart (2005)
Hollywood Dreams (2006)
Suffering Man's Charity (2007)
Watercolors (2008)
A Single Woman (2009)
Double Duty (2009)
Irene in Time (2009)


References[edit]


^ "Awards for Karen Black". IMDb.com. Retrieved 2013-08-09. 
^ "Karen Black Biography (1939?-)". Filmreference.com. Retrieved 2013-08-09. 
^ Frisbie, Thomas (2008-06-18). "Article: Wrote history-based books for young adults". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2010-09-13. 
^ "Karen Black Biography - Yahoo! Movies". Movies.yahoo.com. Retrieved 2013-08-09. 
^ "Karen Blanche Ziegler: Zellner Family Genealogy". Zellnerfamily.com. Retrieved 2013-08-09. 
^ "The Pyx Soundtrack". IMDb.com. Retrieved 2013-08-09. 
^ a b "Karen Black dies at 74; actress starred in 'Five Easy Pieces' and 'Easy Rider'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2013-08-10. 
^ "Some Guy Who Kills People Casting News". DreadCentral. Retrieved 2013-08-09. 
^ "Overview for Karen Black". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 2013-08-09. 
^ a b "Karen Black biography". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 2013-08-09. 
^ "Show Business: Boom in Black". TIME. 1975-06-09. Retrieved 2013-08-09. 
^ Elder, Robert K. (2008-09-19). "Karen Black reflects on her life and career". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2013-08-09. 
^ "'Five Easy Pieces' Actress Karen Black Dies at 74". theguardian.com. 2013-08-08. Retrieved 2013-08-10. 
^ "Karen Black obituary". theguardian.com. 2013-08-09. Retrieved 2013-08-10. 
^ "Actress Karen Black dies". chicagotribune.com. 2013-08-09. Retrieved 2013-08-09. 
^ "Karen Black, Easy Rider actress dies aged 74". BBC News US and Canada. 2013-08-09. Retrieved 2013-08-10. 


External links[edit]



Wikimedia Commons has media related to Karen Black.



Karen Black at the Internet Movie Database
Karen Black at the Internet Broadway Database
Karen Black at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
"The Films of Karen Black", video compilation, 3 min.
Karen Black at AllRovi
Works by or about Karen Black in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
Stuck! movie site
Podcast interview March 2007
Karen Black — The Terror Trap
Karen Black at Find-A-Grave









v
t
e


Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture (1961–1980)









Rita Moreno (1961)
Angela Lansbury (1962)
Margaret Rutherford (1963)
Agnes Moorehead (1964)
Ruth Gordon (1965)
Jocelyne LaGarde (1966)
Carol Channing (1967)
Ruth Gordon (1968)
Goldie Hawn (1969)
Karen Black/Maureen Stapleton (1970)
Ann-Margret (1971)
Shelley Winters (1972)
Linda Blair (1973)
Karen Black (1974)
Brenda Vaccaro (1975)
Katharine Ross (1976)
Vanessa Redgrave (1977)
Dyan Cannon (1978)
Meryl Streep (1979)
Mary Steenburgen (1980)












Complete list
(1943–1960)
(1961–1980)
(1981–2000)
(2001–present)

















v
t
e


National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress






1954–1959



Nina Foch (1954)
Marjorie Rambeau (1955)
Debbie Reynolds (1956)
Sybil Thorndike (1957)
Kay Walsh (1958)
Edith Evans (1959)








1960–1969



Shirley Jones (1960)
Ruby Dee (1961)
Angela Lansbury (1962)
Margaret Rutherford (1963)
Edith Evans (1964)
Joan Blondell (1965)
Vivien Merchant (1966)
Marjorie Rhodes (1967)
Virginia Maskell (1968)
Pamela Franklin (1969)








1970–1979



Karen Black (1970)
Cloris Leachman (1971)
Marisa Berenson (1972)
Sylvia Sidney (1973)
Valerie Perrine (1974)
Ronee Blakley (1975)
Talia Shire (1976)
Diane Keaton (1977)
Angela Lansbury (1978)
Meryl Streep (1979)








1980–1989



Eva Le Gallienne (1980)
Mona Washbourne (1981)
Glenn Close (1982)
Linda Hunt (1983)
Sabine Azéma (1984)
Anjelica Huston (1985)
Dianne Wiest (1986)
Olympia Dukakis (1987)
Frances McDormand (1988)
Mary Stuart Masterson (1989)








1990–1999



Winona Ryder (1990)
Kate Nelligan (1991)
Judy Davis (1992)
Winona Ryder (1993)
Rosemary Harris (1994)
Mira Sorvino (1995)
Juliette Binoche / Kristin Scott Thomas (1996)
Anne Heche (1997)
Christina Ricci (1998)
Julianne Moore (1999)








2000–2009



Lupe Ontiveros (2000)
Cate Blanchett (2001)
Kathy Bates (2002)
Patricia Clarkson (2003)
Laura Linney (2004)
Gong Li (2005)
Catherine O'Hara (2006)
Amy Ryan (2007)
Penélope Cruz (2008)
Anna Kendrick (2009)








2010–present



Jacki Weaver (2010)
Shailene Woodley (2011)
Ann Dowd (2012)













Authority control



WorldCat
VIAF: 97113511
LCCN: no92026470
GND: 13820800X
MusicBrainz: f3d82d5c-4d16-4931-98bd-c5ae6e8aaf12









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