(NEWS10) – This summer marks 40 years since the iconic college humor movie, “Animal House,” was released, launching many careers, including an actress that calls the Berkshires home.
Her films have been passed down from generation to generation. Now, she’s sharing her love of film locally in the Berkshires. In a little town just outside of Great Barrington, you might spot a famous actress.
“I’m now meeting people showing this film to their grandchildren, great grandchildren,” Karen Allen said.
Allen is a woman of many loves. Acting for one.
She’s known for playing the feisty and fierce Marion Ravenwood in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and sweet Katy in “Animal House.”
“That film is as fresh in people’s mind as when it came out,” she said. “To watch it today it is so wildly politically incorrect.”
It was Allen’s love of theater that brought her to the Berkshires in the 1990s.
“I thought, ‘Wow, this is really a beautiful area,’” she recalled. “I felt instantly at home. I cycled all over the Berkshires. That was my real falling in love.”
Her second love is her home.
“I love this place,” she said. “I love the land; love the trees.”
Far from the lights, camera and action, when Allen isn’t on location filming, you’ll find her working in her gardens. Inside her home, which used to be an old barn built in the 1700s, are the items she’s collected throughout her travels.
But her love affair with the Berkshires spans outside of her 26 acre property.
“I love Tanglewood,” she said.
And surrounded by the arts, there’s never any shortage of ways to be inspired.
“We have MASS MoCA; the Clark Museum.”
And then there’s her other love – designing textiles.
“It was my first love,” she explained. “It goes back to my childhood. I learned to knit as a young child. My grandmother taught me. Loved to make all kinds of things.”
Allen, who attended Fashion Institute in New York, found herself as a single working mother wanting to do more. She opened Karen Allen Fiber Arts.
“I learned how to use these beautiful machines,” she said. “For about a year I just worked on these.”
Now her own creations line the shelves at her shop in Great Barrington along with other designers she’s handpicked.
“Occasionally, I’ll be in the store, sometimes people are so surprised they have no idea I have anything to do with it,” she said.
Allen’s love affair with the Berkshires now encompasses all of her passions. The heroine on screen is now making her own movies.
“I had shot a film that I directed and wrote that we shot here in the Berkshires called “A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud.”
But this summer, she’s ready to take on her longest term project: focusing on her home.
“I love this place.”
She’s also working on another independent film, which she’s hoping comes out next year, and she spent much of last year promoting her most recent film, “A Year By the Sea.”
