- She designs clothes for her own clothing label, Image.
- Overcame temporary blindness caused by keratoconjunctivitis in 1978. She later won major theater awards for playing a blind woman in "Monday Before the Miracle" and "The Miracle Worker.".
- Voted one of the most beautiful women in the world by the readers of Harper's Bazaar magazine in 1983.
- An accomplished hand-knitting fanatic, Allen runs her own knitwear design studio, Karen Allen Fiber Arts. (November 2004)
- Has a major in design from New York's Fashion Institute of Technology.
- Considered for the role of Princess Leia Organa in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), later cast in the George Lucas-produced Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
- In 1995 she founded Berkshire Mountain Yoga in Massachusetts.
- Member of a notable group of Lee Strasberg alumni: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, and Matt Zemlin, among others.
- Parents: Carroll Thompson Allen (FBI agent) and Patricia A. Howell (schoolteacher).
- She inaugurated her own knitwear design studio in 2004 in Massachusetts: Karen Allen Fiber Arts.
- She teaches yoga.
- She has appeared in four films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), Manhattan (1979), Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Malcolm X (1992).
- She is of Irish, Scottish, English, and Welsh descent.
- Son, Nicholas Browne, was born on September 14, 1990.
- Studied at the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute.
- She was considered for the role of Dorothy Valance in Blue Velvet (1986).
- Graduated from DuVal High School in Glenndale, Maryland, in 1969.
- Former student of New York acting teacher David Gideon, when she studied at the Lee Strasberg Institute.
- Has two sisters.
- Lived with musician Stephen Bishop.
- Studied in the Washington Theater Laboratory.
- She auditioned for the role of Elvira Hancock in Scarface (1983).
- Is a good harmonica player. She was shown playing the harmonica in the 1984 movie "Until September".
- Was famously tied up and had her mouth gagged in both the "Indiana Jones" movies she appeared in: Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008).
- Born at 10:11 AM.
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