Karen Allen's Real Name: Karen Allen

Quick answer: The actress works under her own name, Karen Allen. Her official website says she was born in southern Illinois and grew up in Washington, D.C., and American Theatre magazine says she was born in Illinois in 1951. A Library of Congress record lists the fuller form Karen Jane Allen and a birth date of October 5, 1951, in Carrollton, Illinois, but no second source here confirmed those details.

Real name and early life

Allen's official site says she "was born in southern Illinois, but grew up in Washington, DC," that her father worked for the FBI and her mother was an elementary school teacher, and that she is the middle of three daughters. American Theatre magazine, in a 2013 profile, says she "was born in Illinois in 1951 but moved around as a child." The Library of Congress authority file records October 5, 1951, in Carrollton, Illinois, and the name Karen Jane Allen.

Her site says that at 17 she moved to New York to study textile and clothing design at the Fashion Institute of Technology, left after two years to travel in the West Indies and Latin America, and later attended George Washington University while performing with the experimental Washington Theatre Laboratory.

Career highlights

Both sources say her first film role was Katy in Animal House (1978). Her site says she next appeared in The Wanderers and A Small Circle of Friends before Steven Spielberg cast her as Marion Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark, shot in 1980. Encyclopaedia Britannica's entry on that film describes Marion as the "feisty" owner of a rustic bar.

Her site lists 1980s films including Cruising, Shoot the Moon, Starman with Jeff Bridges, Paul Newman's The Glass Menagerie, and Scrooged with Bill Murray. On stage, it says she played Helen Keller opposite Jane Alexander in The Monday After the Miracle on Broadway, winning a Theatre World Award. American Theatre says she ruptured a vocal cord on Broadway in 1982.

Her site says she married actor Kale Browne in 1988 and that their son, Nicholas, was born in 1990; American Theatre spells the surname Brown. She then took supporting roles in films such as The Sandlot, Malcolm X, The Perfect Storm, and In the Bedroom, and later appeared in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Her site says she directed her first film, the short A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud., in 2016, and runs a textile business, Karen Allen Fiber Arts, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Name notes for searchers

People looking up Karen Allen or Karen Jane Allen are looking for the same Raiders actress. Marion Ravenwood is her character, not her name.