Karen Kondazian

Karen Kondazian is author of the novel The Whip and The Actors Encyclopedia of Casting Directors. Her longtime column, The Actor’s Way appeared in BackStageWest.

Karen Kondazian’s career began at age eight when she was chosen to be one of the infamous children on Art Linkletter’s Kids Say the Darndest Things. The opportunity to miss school during tapings was all it took for Karen to abandon her life’s goal of becoming a spy and focus on acting.

She completed her BA at SF State College, and continued her schooling at The University of Vienna and The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. Her first professional acting work was in the award winning off-Broadway production of The Trojan Women. Her theater career has included starring opposite Ed Harris in Sweet Bird of Youth, Stacy Keach in Hamlet, and Richard Chamberlain in Richard II. She has starred in over 50 television shows and films including, James Dean with James Franco, Yes Giorgio with Luciano Pavarotti, NYPD Blue, Frasier, and series regular in CBS’s Shannon.

Numerous awards followed for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Orpheus Descending, Night of the Iguana, and Master Class. She also won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Actress in Rose Tattoo, in which her work so impressed Tennessee Williams that they became friends and he gave her carte blanche to produce any of his work.

She is a lifetime member of the Actors Studio, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and Women in Film. She occasionally teaches acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute in Hollywood.