Easy Rider star Karen Black dies of cancer at the age of 74

By Cliff Renfrew

Published: 19:24 EDT, 8 August 2013 | Updated: 05:15 EDT, 9 August 2013

Actress Karen Black has died from cancer at the age of 74.

The distinctive-looking Chicago born star appeared in over 100 movies including classics Easy Rider with Peter Fonda, Five Easy Pieces with Jack Nicholson and Nashville.

Her fourth husband Stephen Eckelberry revealed that his wife had died from complications from the disease on Thursday in Los Angeles.

Big star: Karen Black passed away from cancer on Wednesday - here she appeared at Hitchcock premiere in Hollywood in November 2012

Breakthrough role: Karen played a prostitute who takes LSD with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda in the classic movie that led to bigger roles for the actress

Tribute: Hollywood star Kirstie Alley paid her respects to Karen Black after she died from cancer on Thursday

Diagnosed with ampullary cancer in 2010 the actress had sought help from the public to cover her medical bills - an appeal by her husband on a crowd sourcing website raised more than $60,000 towards her treatment.

Hollywood star Kirstie Alley paid tribute to the hard working actress on her Twitter account on Thursday - she wrote:'RIP Karen Black ... you were instrumental in my career ... it was a pleasure knowing you.'

Distinctive look: Karen's stunning features led her to be cast in a variety of roles - here she poses before becoming famous in 1968

Juliette Lewis also paid tribute by tweeting: Karen Black was my mentor and a 2nd mother to me. She inspired everyone she came in contact with. Her spirit/strength My luv is beyond words.

Black's Great Gatsby co-star Mia Farrow posted on her Twitter: Wonderful Karen Black rest in peace.

Office star Rainn Wilson also paid his respects via Twitter writing: So sad to hear about Karen Black's death. She was a vital, courageous person & actress. #RIPkarenblack]

With her full lips, striking eyes and wavy hair the actress often played women that were troubled, quirky or under attack.

Famous roles: Karen seen here with Jack Nicholson in 1970 film Five Easy Pieces

'Wonderful': Tributes flooded in for Karen, seen here in 1975 film Nashville with co-star with Henry Gibson

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.

Described by The New York Times as a 'pathetically appealing vulgarian,' Black's performance won her an Oscar nomination and Golden Globe Award. 

In reality the well-read, cerebral Black, raised in a comfortable Chicago suburb, had little in common with her relatively simple-minded character.

Charlton Heston (Alan Murduck), Karen Black (Nancy Pryor) in Airport 1975 - 1974

'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.

In 1971, she starred with Nicholson once again in Drive.

Over the next few years, she worked with such top actors and directors as Richard Benjamin in Portnoy's Complaint, Robert Redford and Mia Farrow in The Great Gatsby and Charlton Heston in Airport 1975.

Flapper girl: Karen seen here in The Great Gatsby in which she starred alongside Robert Redford and Mia Farrow

Glamorous: Karen seen at the Academy Awards in 2000

She was nominated for a Grammy Award after writing and performing songs for Nashville in which she played a country singer in Robert Altman's 1975 ensemble epic.

Black also starred as a jewel thief in Alfred Hitchcock's last movie, Family Plot which was released in 1976.

She was born Karen Ziegler and grew up in Park Ridge, Illinois, her father was a sales executive and violinist, her mother the children's novelist Elsie Reif Zeigler.

By grade school, she already knew she wanted to be an actress and she was such an advanced  learner that at age 15 she enrolled in Northwestern University to study drama, a time she remembered as stifling and discouraging.

By the early 1960s, she had moved to New York and made her film debut in The Prime Time before marrying Charles Black.

The savvy actress kept her husband's surname even though they were together only for a short time.

She studied acting under Lee Strasberg and through much of the 1960's she worked off-Broadway and in television, including Mannix and Adam, 12.

Her first Broadway show The Playroom lasted less than a month, but brought her to the attention of a young director-screenwriter, Francis Ford Coppola, who cast her in the 1966 release You're a Big Boy Now.

Black was married four times - she is survived by Eckelberry, a son and a daughter.

Missed: Karen Black with her daughter Celina at the Karen Black and daughter Celina 12th Annual Night of 100 Stars Gala at Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles in March 2003