Actress Karen Black died 8 August 2013. She had been diagnosed with ampullary cancer in 2010, and the disease recurred in June 2012. Born in Park Ridge, Illinois, she won Fangoria’s Chainsaw Award in 2004 for Best Supporting Actress (House of 1000 Corpses), and Golden Globes in 1971 and 1975 for Best Supporting Actress (for Five Easy Pieces and The Great Gatsby). She was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress in 1976 (The Day of the Locust) and for an Academy Award in 1971, again for Five Easy Pieces.
English: Karen Black at the Dallas International Film Festival in April 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
After briefly attending Northwestern University, she moved to New York to study under Lee Strasberg, and then appeared off- and on Broadway in the mid-1960s. Her film career took off in 1969, when she appeared in Easy Rider.
Writing for The Wrap, Sara Morrison says that “Black had the good fortune to arrive on the Hollywood scene as the old studio order was fading and a new one — guided by a greater sense of permissiveness and narrative complexity — took its place. She was not conventionally attractive, but in age where a gap-toothed Lauren Hutton could become a supermodel and actors like Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman, whose ethnic looks would have doomed them to character roles, took their place as leading men, Black became a symbol of New Hollywood. Her films captured the zeitgeist of the period and her on-screen persona — slightly daffy, somewhat blue collar — was melded by the likes of Robert Altman, John Schlesinger, and Bob Rafelson.”
In the 1980s, the thinking of Hollywood again changed, and Black’s career shifted to horror films. Her two final appearances have yet to be released: comedy She Loves Me Not and mystery The Being Experience. Her genre roles include: Ooga Booga (2013), Some Guy Who Kills People (2011), OowieWanna (2011), Meet the Eye (2009), Suffering Man’s Charity (2007), Greater Than a Tiger (2007), Dr. Rage (2005), House of 1000 Corpses (2003), Curse of the Forty-Niner (2002), A Light in the Darkness (2002), Teknolust (2002), Soulkeeper (2001), Oliver Twisted (2000), Decoupage 2000: Return of the Goddess (1999), Light Speed (1998), Conceiving Ada (1997), The Hunger (1997), Crimetime (1996), Dinosaur Valley Girls (1996), Plan 10 from Outer Space (1995), Auntie Lee’s Meat Pies (1992), Legend of the Roller Blade Seven (1992), Return of the Roller Blade Seven (1992), The Roller Blade Seven (1991), Children of the Night (1991), Mirror Mirror (1990), Night Angel (1990), Evil Spirits (1990), Out of the Dark (1988), The Invisible Kid (1988), It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987), Worlds Beyond (1987), Invaders from Mars (1986), The Blue Man (1985), Cut and Run (1985), The Hitchhiker (1985), The Last Horror Film (1982), Killer Fish (1979), Capricorn One (1977), Burnt Offerings (1976), Trilogy of Terror (1975), The Pyx (1973), and Circle of Fear (1972).
Black was divorced three times. Her first husband, Charles Black (married 1955-62), provided the name for which she was known. She is survived by her fourth husband, film editor/producer/director Stephen Eckelberry (married in 1987) and two children.
