Karen Black, who was Oscar-nommed for \u201cFive Easy Pieces\u201d and starred in films including \u201cNashville,\u201d and \u201cEasy Rider,\u201d died Thursday after a long battle with cancer. She was 74.<\/p>\n
Her husband Stephen Eckelberry announced her death on Facebook, saying \u201cIt is with great sadness that I have to report that my wife and best friend Karen Black has just passed away, only a few minutes ago. Thank you all for all your prayers and love, they meant so much to her as they did to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The offbeat, intense actress also tried singing, songwriting and play writing, and was nominated for a Grammy for writing the songs \u201cMemphis\u201d and \u201cRolling Stone\u201d which she performed in character in Robert Altman\u2019s \u201cNashville.\u201d<\/p>\n
She often played women on the edge, actresses and hookers, and though she had a memorable comeback in Altman\u2019s \u201cCome Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean,\u201d she largely worked in dozens of B-movies after the early 1980s.<\/p>\n
Her first major film role came in Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s 1966 \u201cYou\u2019re a Big Boy Now,\u201d and she also appeared in TV shows including \u201cAdam 12,\u201d \u201cMannix,\u201d \u201cJudd for the Defense\u201d in the TV movies \u201cTrilogy of Terror.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among her other roles were Nancy Pryor, the stewardess who is forced to fly the plane in 1974\u2032s \u201cAirport 1975,\u201d as an actress in John Schlesinger\u2019s \u201cThe Day of the Locust,\u201d as Mabel in 1974\u2032s \u201cThe Great Gatsby\u201d and as a kidnapper in Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s last film \u201cFamily Plot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Associated with several iconic films and directors of the 1970s, she talked to Paper magazine recently about the era, \u201cWe were just doing our thing. I happen to have an acting style that is very spontaneous and very un-self-conscious, and it went with the movies of the \u201970s. It was a great time, it was a very beautiful time. There was a way of loving freedom \u2014 or loving spontaneity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Born Karen Blanche Ziegler in Park Ridge, Ill., she attended Northwestern U. and before moving to New York to appear in Off-Broadway productions. She took the name Black from her first husband, Charles Black.<\/p>\n
Black was also married briefly to actor Robert Burton and to screenwriter L.M. Kit Carson, with whom she had a son, Hunter Carson. She married Eckelberry in 1987, with whom she adopted a daughter, Celine.