Karen’s career began at age eight when she was chosen to be one of the infamous children on Art Linkletter’s “Kids Say the Darndest Things.” The opportunity to miss school during tapings was all it took for Karen to abandon her life’s goal of becoming a spy and focus on acting. She completed her B.A. at San Francisco State College, and Karen then continued her schooling at The University of Vienna and The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts.

Karen’s first professional acting work was in the award winning off-Broadway production of The Trojan Women. Her theater career has included starring opposite Ed Harris (be still my heart) in Sweet Bird of Youth, Stacy Keach in Hamlet, and Richard Chamberlain in Richard II. She won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Actress in The Rose Tattoo, (in which her work as actor and producer so impressed Tennessee Williams that they became friends and he gave her carte blanche to produce any of his work in his lifetime).

Karen in Front of the Wells Fargo Silver Reef Museum