Karen Black, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Karen Black

American actress, screenwriter, singer, and songwriter

Date of Birth: 01-Jul-1939

Place of Birth: Park Ridge, Illinois, United States

Date of Death: 08-Aug-2013

Profession: screenwriter, actor, composer, singer, singer-songwriter, stage actor, television actor, film actor

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Cancer


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About Karen Black

  • Karen Blanche Black (née Ziegler; July 1, 1939 – August 8, 2013) was an American actress, screenwriter, singer, and songwriter.
  • She rose to prominence for her work in various independent films in the 1970s, frequently portraying eccentric and offbeat characters, and established herself as a figure of New Hollywood.
  • Her career spanned over 50 years, and includes nearly 200 credits in both independent and mainstream films.
  • Black received numerous accolades throughout her career, including two Golden Globe Awards, as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. A native of suburban Chicago, Black studied theater at Northwestern University before dropping out and relocating to New York City.
  • She performed on Broadway in 1965 before making her major film debut in Francis Ford Coppola's You're a Big Boy Now (1966).
  • Black relocated to California and was cast as an acid-tripping prostitute in Dennis Hopper's road film Easy Rider (1969).
  • This led to a lead in the drama Five Easy Pieces (1970), in which she played a hopeless waitress, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.
  • Black made her first major commercial picture with the disaster film Airport 1975 (1974), and her subsequent appearance as Myrtle Wilson in The Great Gatsby (1974) won her a second Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. Black starred as a glamorous country singer in Robert Altman's ensemble musical drama Nashville (1975), also writing and performing two songs for the soundtrack, which won a Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack.
  • Her portrayal of an aspiring actress in John Schlesinger's morbid drama The Day of the Locust (also 1975) earned her a third Golden Globe nomination, this time for Best Actress.
  • She subsequently appeared in three roles in Dan Curtis's anthology horror film Trilogy of Terror (1975), followed by Curtis's supernatural horror feature, Burnt Offerings (1976).
  • The same year, she starred as a con artist in Alfred Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot. In 1982, Black starred as a trans woman in the Robert Altman-directed Broadway debut of Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, a role she also reprised in Altman's subsequent film adaptation.
  • She next starred in the comedy Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? (1983), followed by Tobe Hooper's remake of Invaders from Mars (1986).
  • For much of the late 1980s and 1990s, Black starred in a variety of arthouse, independent, and horror films, as well as writing her own screenplays.
  • She had a leading role as a villainous mother in Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses (2003), which cemented her status as a cult horror icon.
  • She continued to star in low-profile films throughout the early 2000s, as well as working as a playwright before her death of ampullary cancer in 2013.

Read more at Wikipedia

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