Karen Austin has performed a wide variety of lead roles in film, television movies & mini-series, series regular, recurring & guest work as well as stage work in LA, Chicago & London. 

major credits include:

• Films: Rum Diary, Summer Rental, Jagged Edge, Far From Home, Taming of the Shrew, Lazarus
•  Mini Series &  TV Movies, lead roles:  Laura Lansing Slept Here, Celebrity, Hillside Stranglers, Murder One, Casey's Gift, Murder or Memory, When the Time Comes, The Assassin
• Series regular: The Quest, Nightcourt, Hollywood Blvd, Live Shot
• Recurring episodic:   Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, Girlfriends, St. Elsewhere, Rodney, Murder One, The Trials of Rosie O'Neill, CSI: Miami.
• Stage leads: NUTS @ The LA Stage Company, Beautified @ the Skylight directed by Jenny Sullivan, Daddy's Dyin' Who's Got the Will @ LA's Theatre/Theatre directed by Del Shors, NAMES @ the Strasberg, LA directed by Adam Davidson, the world premiere of John Ford Noonan's Talking Things Over With Chekhov @ LA's Victory Arts Theatre. Member of the Oxford Mummers, an ensemble rep in England, The Wisdom Bridge Theatre in Chicago, and the Dream Cycles Mime Troupe @ the Body Politic in Chicago.
• Ms. Austin has worked with such notables actors as Katherine Hepburn, John Candy, Reese Witherspoon, Drew Barrymore, Johnny Depp, Glenn Close, John Lithgow, Jeff Bridges,Cuba Gooding,  Felicity Huffman, John Rhys Davies, Richard Crenna and with such wonderful directors as Carl Reiner, Jay Sandrich, Leo Penn, George Schaeffer, Richard Marquand, Tony Richardson, Allison Anders, James Brooks & Mark Tinker.

• member Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences
• member Academy of TV Arts & Sciences.
• LA Drama Critics Circle (Ovation) & Dramalogue Awards: Lead Performance, NUTS
• Distinguished Alumni Award & Commencement Speaker, Mary Baldwin University   

• MA, Dramatic Lit, Northwestern University
• Shakespeare with Hugo Dyson, Oxford University
• Movement & mime: Etienne Decroux  &Jerzy Gortowski 
• Scene Study: Milton Katselas & Laura Rose
• training with Dan Fauci

• 15 plus years of leading weekly classes at the Asylum and quarterly Mastery of Acting Workshops, classes at The SAG-AFTRA Conservatory @ AFI,  lectures sponsored by the SAG-AFTRA Membership Education and workshops at Stanford University, The NY Actors Institute, & The West Coast Ensemble.