Birthday: July 1.
Birthplace: Park Ridge, Ill.
Current home: Woodland Hills, Calif.
Real name: Karen Ziegler.
Occupation: Actress/writer.
Marital status: Happily married to Stephen Eckelberry for 10 years. We’ve been together for 14.
Children: A son, 21, and a daughter, 9.
Car: A 1995 midnight teal Ford Taurus.
Working on: I’m in “The Hunger,” airing on Showtime July 20; I’ve written a script that’s been accepted at the Sundance Film Festival; I’m preparing a one-woman show and have lots of other scripts in the works.
The last good movie I saw: “Caught,” directed by Robert M. Young. It made me realize why I’m in this business.
Favorite pigout food: Potato chips.
Favorite childhood memory: Climbing trees. I’d go very high and look out over everything, eat the pears or apples and think about things.
My heroes: L. Ron Hubbard, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ridley Scott, Martin Luther King Jr., Dudley Moore, Burt Reynolds, Claude Debussy, Edgar Degas and my daughter, who is the most stable, sane person I know.
Nobody knows I’m: As interested in them as I am. I watch people at airports, in washrooms. I use it in my writing.
I’ve never been able to: Have the big family that suits me–four children, laughing and screaming and sliding down the banisters. The more noise, the more comfortable I feel.
I’d give anything to meet: Michael Caine.
If I could do it over: I never would have made “Day of the Locust” or married my ex-husband.
My fantasy is: I see exactly what I want to see on the screen.
If I could change one thing about myself: I’d be more complacent and have less of a race-horse sensibility–in short, be a little less well-bred.
Three words that best describe me: Light, present, non-derivative.
