Karen Blanche Black (née Ziegler) was an American actress, screenwriter, singer, and composer, and a two-time Golden Globe winner. Karen Blanche Ziegler was born in a suburb of Chicago in 1939 to Elsie and Norman Ziegler. Her older sister, Gail Brown, also became an actress, known primarily for her television roles. At the age of fifteen, she enrolled at Northwestern University in Evanston, where she studied for the next two years. The future actress then moved to New York, where she made her debut on the Broadway stage. In 1959, she made her film debut. She took the surname Black from her husband, Charles Black, whom she married in 1960. In the following years, Karen Black appeared in a number of successful Hollywood films, including Easy Rider (1969), Airport 1975 (1975), The Day of the Locust (1975), Family Plot (1975), Nashville (1975), and Burnt Offerings (1976).

In 1970, her role in the film Five Easy Pieces earned her an Oscar nomination as well as a Golden Globe Award. Five years later, she again won a Golden Globe for her role in The Great Gatsby (1974). Black often performed as a singer and composer in the films in which she herself appeared. In the 1980s and 1990s, the actress played numerous roles in horror films. Black was married four times. In the 1970s, she joined Scientology, in which she was actively involved until the end of her life. She died in a Los Angeles County hospital after a long public battle with stomach cancer at the age of 75.