- Before starting her acting career, she was a striptease dancer at London's Panama Club.
- Stepmother of Gloria Duggan Gill and step-grandmother of Robyn Gill.
- 1990 Queen Ratling of the Grand Order of Lady Ratlings.
- Born in South Africa, she came to London in 1952 to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
- In January 2016, she had a fall at her home in Ilford and broke her back, leaving her sofa-bound for eight weeks to recover. She still filmed scenes for Peggy's death in EastEnders in March 2016 and again in May 2016; when the scenes were broadcast, she was seen with a walking frame. She was later seen in a wheelchair during her final scenes in EastEnders in January 2017 and also at Barbara Windsor's funeral in January 2021, which would be her final public appearance.
- On arriving in London she joined a drama school and to supplement her grant she got a job as a stripper in Raymond's Revue Barin London's Soho at £10 a week.
- She began working as a washer-upper at a local restaurant in the evenings to help pay for her rent and drama school fees, however she learnt that she could earn twice as much money if she worked as a striptease dancer at London's Panama Club which is what she did.
- Her Irish father was an accountant while his wife her mother was English.
- Karen regularly taught drama on Saturday mornings at Brewers Academy, based in Hornchurch, East London.
- Karen has also been a regular in pantomimes over the years, and played the Wicked Stepmother in Cinderella at the Millfield Theatre, in Edmonton, London at Christmas 2008.
- Having developed an interest in acting at a young age, Karen joined the South African National Theatre at the age of fifteen. She starred in several touring productions over the next two years until she fell afoul of the apartheid laws as she visited the ill daughter of the black stage manager.
- In 2006, Anna Karen used her experience as a striptease dancer to act as a judge in the final edition of Channel 4's reality television documentary Faking It.
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