Karen Black plays the role of The Storyteller in the film A Single Woman.

When Karen was seventeen, she left her home in Park Ridge Illinois to start a career in New York City.  Almost immediately, Karen hooked up with Joseph Papp, and did Shakespeare in the Park and also Olivia  in Twelfth Night at Papp’s off-Broadway Heckshire House.  Karen landed the lead in a Broadway show, The Playroom, which garnered her a nomination for Best Actress by The Drama Circle Critics award. This led to her first starring role in Francis Ford Coppola’s You’re a Big Boy Now, which brought her to Hollywood.  Easy Rider  followed, directed by Dennis Hopper.  The producer of the film, Bob Rafelson, cast Karen in his next film, Five Easy Pieces, which firmly established Karen as a versatile and talented actress.  Karen won a Golden Globe for her performance in that film and was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.  Karen received two more Golden Globes, one for The Great Gatsby and another for Day of the Locust.  A number of memorable film roles followed, including that of the jewel thief in Hitchcock's last movie Family Plot, and a trans-sexual in Robert Altman’s Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, which LA weekly called “the best performance of the year.”  She appeared with Steve Baldwin in George Sluizer’s (director The Vanishing) Crimetime, in Lynn Hershman’s Conceiving Ada, official selection Sundance 1998, George Hickenlooper’s Dogtown for which she received Best Actress at the Hermosa Beach Festival.  For another independent film, Fallen  Arches, she won best actress at the Chicago Alt Festival, playing an alcoholic Italian mom.  One of Karen's favorite roles is the agoraphobic mother in the Southern drama Red Dirt warmly received as official selections to the Los Angeles Independent and the Seattle Film Festivals.
Other great reviews were for her part in Men with Sean Young and John Heard.  Karen also did the original adaptation from the book for that film.  Yes, Karen has recently turned her hand to writing:  Going Home her short won the Golden Plaque at the Chicago International film festival, 97, She co-wrote and co-starred in First Degree, in competition at the Austin Film Festival in October 1999, which garnered praise for it’s recent release.  Her screenplay Deep Purple was accepted at the Sundance Screenwriters lab in Utah.
Recently, Karen added some statues to her collection, by winning a 'Best Actress' awards at two film festivals for Firecracker, a carnival tale, in which she plays both female leads.  After a nationwide run with the Lemmle Theater chain, it was released in August on DVD.  Other recent releases are America Brown, with Natasha Lyonne & Michael Rappaport for producer Andrew Fierberg (The Secretary) which premiered at the Tribecca Film festival, and Teknolust, co-starring with Tilda Swinton, which premiered at Sundance.
Having done many Broadway plays in the past, including Robert Altman’s Stage version of Five And Dime, Karen returned to the New York stage recently with The Vagina Monologues Off-Broadway and with the national touring company.
 Upcoming: Co-starring with David Boreanaz and Anne Heche in a new film directed by Alan Cumming, director of The Anniversary Party, entitled  Suffering Man’s Charity.
American  legend , Henry Jaglom’s new hilarious Hollywood Dreams with Karen hooking up with “Angels in America” star, Justin Kirk, is coming to a theater near you.  As well, later in the year, her next new film “One Long Night” co-staring with Ed Begley Jr. Allison Eastwood and John Seda, and “Read You like a Book” , with Danny Glover, will be released.