By Owen Lipstein July/August 2008
Karen Allen is America's sweetheart with serious longevity.
We first fell in love with her in 1978 as Katy in "Animal House,"
then she reappeared in 1981 as spunky, sexy, wild Marion, partnered up with
Harrison Ford in "Raiders of the Lost Ark." And now Marion and Indie
meet again in the just released "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the
Crystal Ball." An impressive career, to say the least
But what does Karen Allen really want to talk about? Like
any artist, her art—not her acting, necessarily, but her knitting. In 2003, Karen
opened up Karen Allen Fiber Arts in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. This art,
along with her now grown son and small-town life, are her passions. Because
we're practically neighbors, Karen was able to find time to fill us in
Owen Lipstein: "Indiana Jones" just came out. I'm
sure you're very busy
Karen Allen: I am. I just got back from travels for about
two weeks, and l am just here for a couple days and then I leave again
OL: The first thing I wanted to talk to you about is your
fiber arts business. Tell us how you got into it
KA: I started knitting as a kid. My grandmother, who I
adored, was a big knitter, and she taught me to knit. As a kid growing up, I
always loved anything textural. I loved fabrics. I loved design and pattern
within the fabric. I was very curious as to how fabrics were made. I found it
very fascinating to look at what people had chosen within a rug or within a
woven fabric or within a knitted fabric—to just sort of see how people were
putting colors together and the relationship between colors. That was always an
interest to me, and then it continued through the years.
I decided to go to design school at Fashion Institute of
Technology in New York in 1969. I was there for a couple of years. I didn't
graduate because there was just so much going on in the world at that time.
Kent State was happening, and there was a lot of turbulence. The [people at
school] kept referring to [what we were doing] as "the fashion
industry." A lot of the people I knew who were there were going off to
office-type jobs. It lost its appeal for me somehow, at that particular point
in my life.
I just went out into the world and worked for about a year,
and then I went off and traveled all over Central America, South America and
Mexico. I maintained this fascination with design and fabrics. Certainly South
and Central America were very inspirational in terms of that. I collected quite
a lot of extraordinary things while I was traveling, beautiful hand-embroidered
and hand-woven pieces. Then I came back and went off in my other direction.
I started working in the theater, but I always kept this
thread of design and knitting. Often when I was doing films, I would bring a
suitcase of clothing for the location shoot and a suitcase full of yarn. I would set up a little design studio in my
trailer, because there are often many, many that go by when you are not needed
as they are lighting, or the weather changes and suddenly they have to shift
their idea of how they are going to shoot something, or what they are going to
shoot. It is essential as an actor working in film that you have other things
to occupy you, or you can get extremely unhappy sitting around on the set for
hours and hours and hours. You're often in hair and makeup. There's not a lot
you can do. You can't go for a run or anything.
The real turning point for me came when I had gone back to
living in New York and my son was in school. I had been working in the theater
and doing some films, and I really began to realize that the traveling involved
in working in films, and the hours involved in working with the theater—that my
son was getting older and it was getting more and more challenging to really be
in my child's life in the way I wanted to. I decided I was going to have to
make a shift through the next period of time. He was just about to go into
junior high school. I was seeing a nice long stretch of being a parent, the
main support system, in his life. I thought I needed to do something creative
in which I was utilizing myself and my fascination with life, but it wasn't
going to be able to be acting.
Sot went back to F.I.T. and I studied machine knittings. I
had always thought, in the back of my mind, that I would love to start a
knitwear company, and I knew I couldn't do it with knitting [by hand]. I knew
that was not even within the realm of possibility. It's just too slow and not
practical, especially since I knit in a very unusual way where I often use
many, many, many colors and it’s beautiful, but it's slow. It could take me six
month to knit a sweater by hand. So how do you put a price on something that is
taking six months to do? It ends up being like a painting or something.
OL: Do you see your work as art, or craft, or do you make
such a distinction?
KA: I don't think I do make such a distinction. I think of
it as art in the sense that there is a very creative process involved in
creating the textile, in creating the fabric. I don't see it as art in the
sense that I have no interest in necessarily making something that somebody is
going to hang on a wall or sit on a shelf.
OL: Your hats are a good example. You talk about how you
think a lot about your hats and want to make sure they are not itchy and can be
worn. Can you comment on that?
KA: I think what I really love is making what I would call
practical art or wearable art. It has an element of art in it, in the way any
beautiful textile does, whether it's a rug or any beautiful fabric, and then
it's just a matter of what you do with it. You can upholster a piece of
furniture with it, or you can use it in so many different ways. I just happen
to love to create things that people can wear. I have, for instance, a love of
ascots and things like that which were worn a lot back in different periods of
time. This is a whole other kettle of fish I won't get into, but I have a love
of very traditional, very ancient textiles. I feel like there is a real
vibration that emanates from them and that they have a quality or beauty. I
think the first time I ever felt that way was looking at Navajo rugs. I felt
there was a kind of vibration that came from them that had to do with some sort
of purpose or unity or expression of a people's culture. I am very interested
in the way in which design kind of ties the world together.
OL: You've had a couple of different lives, it would seem.
Not many people get to do this. How do compare your current life and your past
life?
KA: Acting is a fascinating profession and I absolutely love
it. Is given me a very interesting, colorful, diverse life. I've traveled a
lot. I've worked with a lot of people. I've created a body of work, which is a
lovely thing. On the other hand, it's a profession in which you are employed
and unemployed and employed and unemployed and employed and unemployed ad
nauseam, unless you can get into creating your own production company and
developing projects for yourself. But that can also be filled with always
trying to get projects off the ground, which really wasn't a choice that I was
going to make—probably for several reasons, one being that I was raising a child,
not the kind of world that is a collaborative world. You work when someone asks
you to come and work with them. You wail in between for something to come along
that you want to do.
Certainly at the peak of my career, the late '70s through
all of the '80s and into the early '90s, I often had more work being offered to
me than I could possibly do. It was really a matter of what I was going to say
no to, and what I was going to say yes to, and trying to find a little time in
between just for myself. When you get to be older, like when I got to be in my
mid-40s, suddenly that is not so much the case anymore and there are things
that are being offered, but they're not necessarily things I was that
fascinated about doing.
I want every day to be interesting. Even as a younger
actress, sometimes I was being offered things, but they wouldn't be things I
wanted to do, so you're sitting there with a lot of energy and a lot of desire
to function creatively every day, but you're in this sort of holding zone. I
think most actors would say it's a very challenging profession in that way. I
wish I had discovered this earlier so I would have done this beautiful thing to
fill in the gap at times. For me now, it has been fantastic to have something
every day.
OL: You were absolutely the light of the last “Indiana Jones"
film. The moment you showed up the pace picked up palpably. Was it fun?
KA: Thanks. I had an absolutely fantastic time doing the film.
I’m having a really good time promoting it as well. I hadn’t done a film or
promoted [one] in quite some time, so it's such a fresh, new experience for me
at this particular point in my life. My son has just started college. A huge
chunk of my life was just driving him around everywhere, and he got his
driver's license about a year ago. A lot of those day-to-day intensive tasks of
parenting a younger child have [been] cast away from me at this point. It opens
up my world to get out there and be able to do something like this film and
[promote it].
OL: Your stage career is pretty active, and I've read that
it's your preference. Can you comment on that?
KA: I don't know if I feel that it is so much a preference
at this point in my life. I think because I started out in the theater, there
certainly was a period of time in my life where I felt almost more comfortable
on stage than I felt when I was working in film. I felt like it was more my
milieu, in a sense.
OL: Do you like the connection, the feedback, of theater?
KA: I love the process. I love rehearsing, which you almost
never do in film. I love the intense work that you do with the director and
with your fellow actors, when you are just all in a room together and trying to
really find what the play is about. I love that kind of work. Then I do love
the connection with the audience once you get out there.
People always say, "How do you do it eight times a
week? Doesn't it get boring?" I want to say to them that it's never the
same. It's like you are singing the same song but every time you sing it, there
is something different about it. It's a different moment. It's a different
audience. You're in a different frame of mind. I find that fascinating. It's
more like sculpting to me. You are kind of sculpting the play and sculpting the
character, and kind of chipping away. You get closer and closer and closer to something
that really, at times, can feel like a revelation.
OL: You were in "As You Like It." What part did
you play?
KA: I played Rosalind.
OL: How did you like that?
KA: I had a blast. It was great fun. It was at this
beautiful theater that doesn't really exist in that particular form anymore. It
was at Edith Wharton's old estate. It was outside, and it was just a fantastic
way to do a play.
OL: The Berkshires are your home now. Tell us about your
choice of coming to live here.
KA: I don't know how, exactly, it happened. I came up here
to work in the theater and then I came back several summers in a row, and I
fell in love with the area. I worked at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, and then
at Williamstown Theatre Festival, and then at Shakespeare & Company. There
was a process by which every time I was here I felt at home. It was gorgeous,
the way the little towns are nestled into the hills of the Berkshires. I love
to ski, so my son has grown up [skiing] on Butternut Mountain. We have a pond
at my house, and we would ice skate every winter on this pond. It just seemed
to offer so many beautiful things. I find it a very warm community. Although I
love New York profoundly as a city, it's a whole different vibe. There's a
sweetness to [life here].
It's not the laconic life that people imagine, like,
"Oh my God. What do you do up there in the country?" I've never been
busier in my life since I moved here. I get to drive from Great Barrington to
my home along this incredibly gorgeous road. I take in the trees and the
changing of the seasons, and the birds and the raccoons on the road and the
deer, as opposed to stumbling down a street in New York City [on] which
anything can happen. I don't know. I just find it a really beautiful
environment to live in, and I often, when I travel, find myself thinking, Hmmm...
it's really beautiful here in Italy or Ireland, but it's not quite as beautiful
as the Berkshires.
New York is not going away. I spend quite a bit of time in
New York, and I love going in and spending time there. For the moment, at
least, I'm quite happy to be living here, and my son has been very happy
growing up here. He's at Simon's Rock College now, which I think is such a gift
to him. It's a beautiful college. I teach acting there whenever I have the
chance to do it. I’m on the roster to teach in the fall and spring again this
year, but we'll have to see what happens.
