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Karen Black has passed away

http://news.yahoo.com/five-easy-pieces-star-karen-black-dead-74-220015982.html

Karen was a long time Scientologist, for perhaps more than 40 years - When I was first on staff in the mid 60's, I was told she was a scio and dating our org's Ethics Officer. I never met her, but I did see her in person at an event at the valley org a few years ago that Drew was giving - she had volunteered to be his guinea pig for some demo he was giving - nice person... Mimsey

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Karen Black, the prolific actress who appeared in more than 100 movies and was featured in such counterculture favorites as "Easy Rider," ''Five Easy Pieces" and "Nashville," has died.

Black's husband, Stephen Eckelberry, says the actress died Wednesday from complications from cancer. She was 74.

Known for her full lips and thick, wavy hair that seemed to change color from film to film, Black often portrayed women who were quirky, troubled or threatened. Her breakthrough was as a prostitute who takes LSD with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in 1969's "Easy Rider," the hippie classic that helped get her the role of Rayette Dipesto, a waitress who dates — and is mistreated by — an upper-class dropout played by Jack Nicholson in 1970's "Five Easy Pieces."

Cited by The New York Times as a "pathetically appealing vulgarian," Black's performance won her an Oscar nomination and Golden Globe Award. She would recall that playing Rayette really was acting: The well-read, cerebral Black, raised in a comfortable Chicago suburb, had little in common with her relatively simple-minded character.

"If you look through the eyes of Rayette, it looks nice, really beautiful, light, not heavy, not serious. A very affectionate woman who would look upon things with love, and longing," Black told Venice Magazine in 2007. "A completely uncritical person, and in that sense, a beautiful person. When (director) Bob Rafelson called me to his office to discuss the part he said, 'Karen, I'm worried you can't play this role because you're too smart.' I said 'Bob, when you call "action," I will stop thinking,' because that's how Rayette is.'"
 
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More about her Mimsey
CNN) -- Actress Karen Black's long and public battle with cancer has ended with her death, her agent said Thursday.

Black, who was nominated for an Oscar for her role in the 1970 film "Five Easy Pieces," was 74.

"She was a stellar person in every area of her life," agent Sarabeth Schedeen wrote. "Smart funny talented tenacious supportive and loving. Everyone who knew her will miss her."

Black took her fight to overcome her illness to a crowd-funding website earlier this year, raising thousands of dollars to pay for treatments she hoped to get in Europe.

Her husband posted a message to donors Wednesday -- just hours before her death -- explaining that over the last months her "health continued to deteriorate at an alarming pace."

Actress Karen Black, who was nominated for an Oscar for her role in the 1970 film "Five Easy Pieces," died on Thursday, August 8, her agent said, after a long and public battle with cancer. She was 74.

"She became bed-bound: the spreading cancer having eaten away part of a vertebra and nerves in her lower back," husband Stephen Eckelberry wrote. "Her left leg stopped functioning. We could not go to Europe as we had hoped. It would have been almost impossible to travel to the airport. So we brought alternative treatments to her bedside."

Black survived weeks longer than doctors predicted, he said. "I can't tell you how many times doctors and nurses have pulled me aside and told me that I better start hospice, as she was about to die."

She was placed in a nursing facility by the Motion Picture Television Fund recently, he said

Eckelberry, a filmmaker, said he captured her struggle over the past three years on film.

"I hadn't planned on doing anything with the footage, until a few weeks ago, Karen reached out to her old friend, Elliot Mintz," he wrote. "Elliot is considered a media guru who has offered advice to dozens of famous clients over the years including Karen."

As a result, Black filmed a "deeply moving and candid conversation" with Mintz at her bedside on June 21, which could be released on "the right platform for some kind of presentation."

Black studied under famed acting coach Lee Strasberg in New York early in her career, while she acting on stage in off-Broadway productions in the early 1960s. She made her Broadway debut in "The Playroom" in 1965.

Her big screen career began with Francis Ford Coppola's "You're a Big Boy Now" in 1966, but it was her acting opposite Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in "Easy Rider" that brought her attention in 1969. She was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her work with Jack Nicholson in "Five Easy Pieces" a year later.

Black played a jewel thief in Alfred Hitchcock's last movie, the 1976 film "Family Plot.".
 

clamicide

Gold Meritorious Patron
There's just something that hits me every time a Scio dies. Just because, I never saw any real respect for them when it happened within the cult. We'd have nice memorials and such, but the undercurrent (unless they were 110 years old) was that they were PTS or did something to 'pull it in'.

There were the briefings and such, and so we "knew" that they were "whatever". It wasn't until I left, that I realized that there weren't supposed to be so many people you knew who were dying or had died.

The first time I saw Karen Black, for some reason there was something that just seemed sad... way before cult-time, and it could be nothing, but it just really hit me When I got in, I felt odd, because, I didn't see that go away...
and now she's gone.

It's not like I ever got the chance to buy her a cup of coffee, or talk to her, but there is this psychotic narcissistic pain that I would have liked to befriend her... and it's probably part of why I got into the cult... the belief that I could, with the right 'tek' really salvage other beings. GAG

Rest in peace... I hope you were able to free yourself of the mental bonds of the cult before you passed... if not, I hope that the universe is a benevolent place where passing did free you from that.
 

Adam7986

Declared SP
Death is not properly respected in Scientology. Scientologists casually look the other way when it comes to death. Especially when it's related to an illness, which, as you said, is usually "you pulled it in". So basically, it's your own damn fault you died, so why should I be sad.

It was this casual indifference and lack of respect for human life that upset me so much about Scientology.
 

Sassy

Patron Meritorious
So very sad. I was just reading one of her stories today, where her husband was speaking of her fight against her cancer. He mentioned he'd been filming her---I would so love to see the finished film.

I know people mention Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, etc., but how many of you remember her battling that freaky little African statue in "Trilogy of Terror"? Scared the freakin beJesus out of me when I was a little girl. :omg::omg: You can find it on You Tube & it's G.D. scary!

Anyway, condolences to her husband & family. 74 really isn't old these days. God Bless her, I hope she's found her peace in Heaven.
 
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