So why did magnificent hottie Karen Allen pretty much disappear off the face of the earth after Animal House and Raiders of the Lost Ark before finally returning for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? (Starman doesn't count!) "[A]t some point she went to go knit in the Berkshire Mountains. There was also a marriage followed nine years later by divorce, and single motherhood that would, in concert with the dwindling Hollywood career and the shock of 9/11, prompt her to quit Manhattan permanently for the Berkshires. She had done summer theater in Stockbridge, Mass.; she felt at home there. With her Hollywood money she'd purchased an 18th century barn and remade it; the place came with its own beaver pond, and Allen added a hot tub. She cleared the attic of bats and made it into a master suite with its own sunken bath and office." But now she's back! Yay!

Allen, 56, appears to have left her face alone and kept her body trim with yoga (she used to run a yoga studio here in Great Barrington). 'People all want to know why I haven't been doing more films,' she said, sitting over coffee at her country breakfast table several weeks ago and shooing away one of her cats with a spray bottle.

"These days all somebody has to do is Google you and they know how old you are. I would show up for roles that were written for somebody in their early 50s, and people would say, 'You can't do that, you look too young,' but if I showed up for a role for somebody in their early 40s then the people would say, 'Well, but she's 50.'

"I'm from a generation of fantastic actresses. It's a big pool of really wonderful actresses, and so many of them we never even get to see on the screen anymore."



She ticked off several — Jessica Lange, Debra Winger, Julie Hagerty. [LAT]