In Nepal, in the blustering cold, Marion Ravenwood drinks a patron of her alpine saloon under the table. Then she’s whisked away to Egypt; then she’s steaming across the Mediterranean; and finally, she returns with Indiana Jones to the United States, where the Ark of the Covenant disappears into a vast government archive. 

Karen Allen, who played Indiana Jones’s hard-drinking companion in the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark, has led a somewhat quieter life, but one that has also included its own share of non-stop traveling.

In July she found herself back on the Vineyard, a regular vacation spot for over 30 years. When Ms. Allen heard that Circuit Arts would be featuring Raiders at its Drive-in movie series, she offered to stop by and introduce the movie.

Chatting with fans at the screening. — Ray Ewing

“There are those films that captivate people, and those films that stay in the consciousness of people that love films for generations,” Ms. Allen said in an interview with the Gazette a few days later. “Raiders has proved to be that, a film that a father can’t wait to show his son or daughter.”

Ms. Allen first visited the Vineyard in the early 90s, when her family and friends rented a home on West Chop. She’s been coming back ever since.

“I am completely in love with the Island. I love everything about it,” Ms. Allen said.

But the Vineyard is just one stop on a long list of places Ms. Allen has visited across her winding and unexpected life. 

As a young woman, she studied textiles at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, and spent time traveling across East Asia. Expecting a career in fashion, she fell in love — almost by accident — with the theatre, and a few successful auditions later, found herself alongside John Belushi in Animal House and Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones.

Years after her film success, Ms. Allen resumed her studies at the Fashion Institute. Currently she lives full-time in the Berkshires, running a studio as a textile artist and working with the region’s prominent theatre companies. She spends much of the year traveling around the world — from India to Mexico to Paris — in pursuit of the most elusive traditional textiles, she said. 

“Since I was a child, I’ve been totally and completely enthralled with the

beauty of textiles,” Ms. Allen said.  “I’ve always been creating things with my hands. I love to do that.”

In India, she was mesmerized by the work of a group of sixth and seventh generation woodblock printers. 

Ms. Allen with Harrison Ford. Raiders was released in 1981.

“To watch them work, and to see the almost meditative space that they went into... I mean, they could be doing that or they could be playing Rachmaninoff,” Ms. Allen said. 

In the Berkshires, Ms. Allen also directs plays and occasionally acts in theatrical productions, while still finding time for the occasional Hollywood film. She said her textile work serves as perfect counterweight to her acting and directing. 

“Working in films is a completely collaborative process. And working in the theatre is a completely collaborative process.... But I feel like that process is enhanced by having something I do just in an empty room,” Ms. Allen said.

She returned to her role as Marion Ravenwood in a fleeting final scene of last year’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. But it’s the old magic of Raiders of the Lost Ark that still captures her imagination and, she thinks, the imaginations of generations to come. 

“I meet five year olds — it’s as though the film was made yesterday,” Ms. Allen said. “It doesn’t mean anything to them that the film was made in 1980, 81. It’s all as thrilling now.”