When the elegantly attractive woman in the embroidered jacket and blouse enters, the first thought is, "That's an elegantly attractive woman."
But when she flashes those blue eyes, unleashes that 1,000-watt smile and lets loose that giggly, infectious Marion Ravenwood laugh, there's no mistaking it: It's Karen Allen, the spunky sweetheart of Raiders of the Lost Ark, plucked from semi-retirement by this year's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull like a ruby from a crown, back in Los Angeles to promote the sequel's DVD/Blu-ray release to a dining-room full of rapturous fanboy journalists.
"I've had so many people who've come up to me and said, 'When you came on the screen, everybody in the theater applauded,'" Allen said on Sept. 17 in the Paramount Pictures dining room, between bites of her Cobb salad. "It's just so sweet, really. It makes me feel very touched, very moved, that somehow that character has stayed in people's consciousness and that they were so happy to have me, and her, come back into the stories. What could be better, I mean, you know? To get that kind of enthusiastic response, it's fantastic."
Allen, who traveled to Los Angeles for a couple of days from her home in Massachusetts, talked at length about getting the call to reprise her most famous role, about the film's reception and about the time she got recognized at an inopportune moment (more on that tomorrow).
As for future installments of the Indy franchise?
"I would say [I'm] very open to it," she said. "You know, this was a delightful experience and, yeah. I would welcome it."
But has anyone raised the possibility?
"Not really," she said. "No. I mean, except for fans and, you know, I've had a lot of people say, 'Is there going to be another one?' But, no, not officially."
She paused.
"Do you know something I don't?"
The answer, sadly, is no.
Following are more excerpts of the group interview with Allen. The DVD and Blu-ray of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull drops on Oct. 14.
This movie marked your big return after being out of the limelight for a while.
Allen: I had such a good time doing the film. ... I didn't know going in that we were going to go to the Cannes film festival and open there, which is a pretty big deal, and I didn't know they were going to want me to go to Japan, which I've always wanted to visit, and so I didn't kind of really know how large a promotion we were going to be doing. But, you know I just basically decided this is going to be fun. I just thought,you know, I'm just going to have a really good time doing this. It was a blast. I'm just in a different place in a life where I think if you flash back 20 or 25 years, you can see all of these things as a lot of pressure or something. I just don't see it. I guess I'm older and wiser, I just don't see it as a lot of pressure any more. This is fun, you know? I enjoy it. ...
[Allen took her 18-year-old son, an aspiring chef, with her to Japan to promote Crystal Skull]
Allen: He just turned 18. Yeah. He went to the fish market at 4 in the morning and watched the tuna auctions, and thought that was fantastic. ... He wants to be a chef, so this is all like really important to him, to see the fish auctions, yeah. ...
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Harrison Ford (center) is Indiana Jones, co-starring with Shia LaBeouf (left) as Mutt Williams and Karen Allen (right) as Marion Ravenwood, in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which hits DVD and Blu-ray in October.
Harrison Ford's son is also a chef.
Allen: And what's really amazing too now, is Harrison's daughter--I teach acting at Bard College at Simon's Rock, and Harrison's daughter is in my class. She's quite wonderful, yeah, yeah.
What kind of differences have you seen in the reception to the new film and the first film?
Allen: You know it seems to me like the reception has been incredible for this film. ...
The Cannes film festival was amazing for us. ... Cannes is ... an interesting place to open a film, because it can be disastrous. I mean, if they don't like a film, they don't have any problem letting you know. I mean, films have been booed there, and just all kinds of things. And a film like Crystal Skull is not necessarily a Cannes type of film, so you don't really know, you know, what's going to happen.
And they just loved it. I mean, it was like a four-minute standing ovation. And [director] Steven [Spielberg] had tears in his eyes. ... It was a lovely experience. ...
Was this one of those circumstances where you said to yourself, if this group of people ever comes to me and says they want to do another one of these, I'll do it, whatever? Or were you particular about how your returned and the story and the reason--how they brought you back?
Allen: I think it's like all of the above. I mean, to have an opportunity to work with Steven and Harrison and George Lucas and [producers] Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall again was just too, you know, ... wonderful. And as these rumors kind of persisted over the years, and they kept sort of, there kept being these little hints that would be dropped, that they were trying to do another film, and that yes, maybe they wanted my character to come back into the story, and you know, I'd hear that, and then I wouldn't hear anything for a long time. I never heard it from anyone. ...
At one point, when they released the ... DVD package of the [first three] films, ... the way they decided to do it was to get [all the leading ladies] Kate Capshaw, myself and Alison Doody together out here in L.A. and to do it as the "Women of Indiana Jones" series, we're going to promote the DVDs. And Frank was there, and Harrison stopped by, and we were kidding around with him, "All right, is there going to be another one? And if so, who's going to be in it?" And, you know, Frank was like, 'I'm not saying anything.' [mimes winking] You know? ...
I think when Steven called me to tell me that they had written me into the character and that it was ... not just a cameo, but that they'd really sort of written me a major role in the story, I think ... my first feeling was just like, "I'm there!" ... And then I think it was a couple of weeks before I was going to get the chance to read the script, ... I think it was that sort of thing, you feel a little self-protective about your character, so there's a bit of trepidation like, "What if I read it and I don't like what they've done with my character?"
... And I think there was a little bit of a concern that I would be disappointed or that I might not like the decisions they had made for where she goes from there. And when I sat down the read the script, all of that just fell away. I mean, from the moment she came into the story, and when I saw where it was going and what they had done, I was just so knocked out by it, and then when we got to the end of the story, and I saw that they had Indy and Marion getting married, I was just, I was crying. I was really just so touched. I thought, "Oh, my God, this is really ... very special. They've really decided to bring these characters together in a major way. And really allow them to fall in love with each other." ...
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What about learning that you'd be working with Shia LaBeouf, who plays Marion and Indy's son?
Allen: Steven told me that he wanted Shia to do it, and I didn't know who Shia was. I had never heard of him. So I went sort of Netflixing around and got ... some films so I could see his performances, and was really just knocked out by him. And ... what a fantastic young actor. ...
Working with George and Steven and Harrison, in what ways were they the same guys that you worked with on the first film and in what ways have they evolved over the years?
Allen: It just seemed like everybody was just much more relaxed. Having a good time. ... I think when we were doing the first one, you know, and maybe this was just my perspective, but it seemed like everyone was under a lot more pressure. I mean, we were all in, you know, away from home. So this time Steven really made a decision that he didn't want to go overseas to do it, that he wanted to stay and be with his family, and so the bulk of the film was going to be shot in Los Angeles. ...
I think it had been such a long time coming and they had been working so hard at getting a script that they liked, and it just seemed like one of those projects that when it was finally cleared, that we were all going to come back together and do it. I mean from the first day when I flew out here to do some camera tests and they were going to be looking at wardrobe and we were going to be trying to figure out how Marion was going to look and ... what kind of costumes I was going to wear. It was the first time I met Shia. Harrison was there, George was there, Kathy Kennedy, Frank, and Steven--it was just this feeling of everyone was so excited that we were going to do the film. ...
In Raiders of the Los Ark, because it was kind of an unknown, it wasn't a film that was coming--it was really just sort of this thing--nobody really had a sense of what it was yet. At least I didn't. I mean my joke is always that I always thought we were making a kind of Casablanca kind of film. I had a whole different film in my head. When I saw the film I was like, "Oh!" ...
What's happening with your career in the wake of this? Are people all of a sudden like get me Karen Allen?
Allen: Well there's, I'm reading lots of scripts now. You know, we're in this sort of funny little holding pattern with this SAG strike that isn't happening, but it's kind of keeping films from really moving forward to the extent that they might be otherwise. So there's a couple of things that I've been interested in that are kind of ... waiting to be green-lit. So those things I don't know about. And I'm actually reading something that I just got, it came in yesterday. So I think, you know, that there's going to be other roles out there for me. ...
