Karen Black (July 1, 1939 – August 8, 2013) was an American actress, screenwriter, singer, and songwriter. She is noted for appearing in such films as Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Great Gatsby, Rhinoceros, The Day of the Locust, Nashville, Airport 1975, and Alfred Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot. Over the course of her career, she won two Golden Globe Awards (out of three nominations), and an Academy Award nomination in 1970 for Best Supporting Actress, among numerous other honors.

Early life

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 actress Gail Brown. Black was of German, Bohemian (Czech), and Norwegian descent. She attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, for two years, having commenced university studies in 1954, aged 15. She then moved to New York where she appeared in a number of Off-Broadway productions.

Career

Black (who took that name from her first husband, Charles Black) began her film career in 1959 with a small role in The Prime Time. She appeared in Season 1, episode 10 (Log 132-The Producer) of the 1968 television series Adam-12 as a girl named Susan Decker. She wrote and sang the theme song and supporting songs for The Pyx (1973). 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.

She starred as Nancy Pryor, the stewardess who is forced to fly the plane, in the 1974 disaster film Airport 1975. That 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 for famed directors as an aspiring Hollywood actress in John Schlesinger's The Day of the Locust, as a country singer in Robert Altman's Nashville and as a kidnapper in what turned out to be Alfred Hitchcock's last film, Family Plot. She also co-starred with Bette Davis in a horror film, Burnt Offerings.

In April 2009, Black reunited with director Steve Balderson for Stuck! — an homage to film noir women-in-prison dramas, which co-starred Mink Stole, Pleasant Gehman and The Go-Go's Jane Wiedlin. Black stars also 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

Black married four times:

• Charles Black, from 1955 to 1962.
• Robert Burton, an actor (who appeared alongside Black in Trilogy of Terror, from April 18, 1973 to October 1974.
• 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. The couple were active Scientologists.

On August 8, 2013, Black died in Los Angeles from ampullary cancer at age 74. Her husband, Stephen Eckelberry, posted the following on his Facebook page shortly after her death: "It is with great sadness that I have to report that my wife and best friend, Karen Black has just passed away, only a few minutes ago. Thank you all for all your prayers and love, they meant so much to her as they did to me." In addition to her husband, survivors include a son, Hunter Carson; two daughters, Celine Eckelberry and Diane Koehnemann Bay; a sister, Gail Dugan; a brother, Peter Ziegler; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

Select filmography

• 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)