Karen Price

Playboy Playmate of The Month for January 1981

Karen Price Bio Editors Choice

Karen Price is an American stunt woman, television personality, glamour and nude model. Born Karen Elaina Price on July 17, 1960, in Pasadena, California, she has also been credited as Karen Castoldi. Playboy named her its January 1981 Playmate at 20. Her appearance came during Playboy's polished, high-production 1980s period.

Price has natural breasts, brown eyes and brown hair. Her measurements are 38-26-37.

Her centerfold, shot by Ken Marcus, favored an athletic, camera-ready pose over coy portraiture: the spread presents movement and ease, an image that married studio polish to a performer unafraid of physical demands. Photographically, it arrived at a moment when Playboy’s pictorials were as much about persona as about form, and Marcus’s framing left little doubt that this was a woman whose presence read as active as well as glamorous.

Price’s path into screen work grew out of a lifelong engagement with movement. A childhood and teen foundation in gymnastics and athletic training translated naturally into a Hollywood niche: stunt work. Those skills proved transferable in a town that needed performers who could sell a fall, a fight or a leap with both safety and showmanship, and they opened doors that conventional bit parts rarely did.

On camera she moved easily between small acting turns and the less-visible craft of stunts. Her film credits include appearances in Doctor Detroit and Under the Rainbow, while her stunt portfolio lists work on genre television staples such as Knight Rider, The A-Team and Wonder Woman — shows that depended on skilled physical performers to bring action sequences to life. The combination of on-screen acting and behind-the-scenes stunt work kept her steadily employed across several kinds of production.

Later entries in various credits show she also worked on the production side of television, a modest extension of a career that threaded modeling, acting and rigged physical performance. Taken together, those pieces make a concise portrait: a performer who used athletic training to broaden the kinds of work available to her, moving between posed studio images and the rougher choreography of television stunts with a practical professionalism that suited both.

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