Karen Black

Is the highest ranked actress on the "Oracle of Bacon" website (and 21st overall), which uses the Internet Movie Database to determine which actors can be linked by the highest number of other actors in the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" trivia game.

Karen had a difficult relationship with her father and was eager to get out of the house after her two elder siblings left for college. Hence her decision to marry at 15 - appallingly young even by 1950s standards. The timeline is hazy since Karen fibbed about her age when she came to Hollywood in 1966 - claiming to be 22 instead of 27 - and neglected to acknowledge her first marriage or her past residence in Lafayette, Ind., where her first husband was a psychology student at Purdue University. The people of Lafayette remember Karen as being eccentric.

It was revealed posthumously that Karen Black had a daughter with Robert Benedetti, Diane Koehnemann Bay, who was born March 4, 1959, when Karen was a 19-year-old divorcée studying at Northwestern. Diane was adopted at birth by Don and Joan Koehnemann. On August 7, 2012, Diane got in touch with Karen through Facebook after the state of Illinois unsealed its adoption records. Ironically, Karen had disclosed the secret of Diane's existence to her own family just a few months earlier.

Karen entered Northwestern University at 19 and left two years later. She studied under Lee Strasberg in New York and worked in a number of off-Broadway roles. She made a critically acclaimed debut on Broadway in 1965 in "The Playroom".

Her first big film role was in You're a Big Boy Now (1966), directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

Shortly after wards, she appeared as Marcia in the TV series The Second Hundred Years (1967).

The film that made her a star was Easy Rider (1969), where she worked with Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and a supporting actor named Jack Nicholson.

She appeared with Nicholson again the next year when they starred in Five Easy Pieces (1970), which garnered an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe for Karen. Her roles mainly consisted of waitresses, hookers and women on The Edge.

Turned down the female lead in Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971) that went to Suzanne Pleshette.

Some of her later films were disappointments at the box office, but she did receive another Golden Globe for The Great Gatsby (1974).

Another is as the woman terrorized in her apartment by a murderous Zuni doll come to life in the well received TV movie Trilogy of Terror (1975).

One role for which she is well remembered is that of the jewel thief in Alfred Hitchcock's last film, Family Plot (1976).

Was considered for the role of Muriel Pritchett in The Accidental Tourist (1988), which earned an Oscar for its eventual star Geena Davis.

Launched her career as a playwright in May 2007 with the opening of "Missouri Waltz" in Los Angeles; Black starred in the play as well. The piece is conceived as a play with music, rather than a musical.

Diagnosed with ampullary cancer in November 2010 and had a third of her pancreas immediately removed. Though declared cancer-free in 2011, had relapsed and underwent two operations in 2012.

Elliott Gould, Lee Purcell, Rick Overton, Tanna Frederick, Karyn Rachtman, Lainie Kazan, Paul Sorvino, Julia Garcia Combs, Juliette Lewis, Russell Brown, Alan Cumming, older sister Gail Brown and widower Stephen Eckelberry all delivered eulogies at her memorial service. [September 2013]