THROUGH FATE, coincidence, or intelligent design, Karen Black happens to be reading the autobiography of my namesake – John Huston's An Open Book – on the day I reach her by phone at her Sherman Oaks home. "I just finished reading the chapter about Christmas in Ireland," she enthuses. "It's amazing and wonderful that in the mid-'60s, they still had dinner parties where people dressed in long gowns and tuxedos."

John Huston may have lived a wild life, but Black's autobiography is just as exciting. She's starred in more than 100 films (don't even mention IMDb to her; it's gotten far too many facts wrong), and it's worth noting that in 1975's Trilogy of Terror – one of a pair of collaborations with '70s TV horror king Dan Curtis – Black plays not one, not three, but four roles. Yes, folks, even the trilogy format can't contain all of her facets. Black's Web site, www.karenblack.net, includes an excellent section devoted to her stories about the New York theater world and other subjects, but she isn't planning on penning a traditional tell-all. "I'm not interested in gossip, or the facts, but in how I felt," she says. "I'd like to write an autobiography that reads like fiction."

Perhaps she already has. As anyone lucky enough to have seen it can attest, Black's one-woman stage show, A View of the Heart, pieces together words by lyricists, poets, and playwrights into a truly amazing self-portrait of sorts. Or at least an X-ray of Black's formidable talents – fans of her most familiar film work will be shocked by the power of her singing and the versatility of her interpretive skills. One minute Black rips through Bessie Smith at her cleverest, making you want to know why the blues upset her so. The next she's reciting Katherine Anne Porter and making you worry you'll die in your sleep – and wonder if you're sleepwalking instead of awake.

Black credits the "high aesthetics" of longtime friend and Five Easy Pieces and Easy Rider costar Toni Basil – who put together stage shows for Bette Midler, besides launching the music video era with "Mickey" – when talking about Heart's radical juxtapositions. But Black alone gives the show its loopy oomph. She can make viewers uneasy, wondering if she needs help, before surprising them with just how deep her artistry runs. "They get the message, if there is one," Black says about the audience and the show. The message is there, all right: Some performers are irresistible forces, and the best, well, they just might know you better than you know yourself.

The woman born Karen Ziegler in 1945 has been married for more than two decades and has an 18-year-old daughter who just went to Puerto Vallarta for her birthday. At this point in her career, she probably knows much more about moviemaking than the majority of the directors she works with, but a venture here or there aside, she'd rather stick to acting, singing, and writing. "I just can't bear the responsibility level that comes with directing," she says. "I find it incredibly enervating." Ask her about just one of her roles, Connie White in 1975's Nashville, and her off-the-cuff insight ("She's a very social person and a very hostile person. Normally she won't share her feelings, but if 5,000 people listen, she will") offers a clue as to why one of the songs she wrote for the character has since been covered by Dean Wareham.

One of Rex Reed's entertaining personality-profile books has a chapter on Bette Davis in which Davis, playing the old Hollywood legend to the hilt, complains about the work ethics of Black and all the rest of Mother Goddam's costars in the 1976 mirrored-sunglasses-are-terrifying classic Burnt Offerings. Funny stuff, because today it's fair to say that Black's dedication and persistence make Davis seem like a frail flower. Since Rob Zombie worshiped her in House of 1000 Corpses, she's won a film-fest award in Portugal for a movie called Firecracker, recently finished shooting a movie with Danny Glover in Berkeley, and is about to start working with Alan Cumming in his next directorial effort, Suffering Man's Charity. She's a poet, published in California Quarterly, and she's written a play.

Six degrees of Kevin Bacon? Three degrees of Karen Black might be too hot for those with weak hearts. Black talks about Pedro Almodóvar before I even bring up the subject of directors, and then lists a few she especially admires – Alan Rudolph, Christopher Guest, and Altman ("of course") – once I do. Which actor would Black have liked to have worked with? "Dudley Moore. He was the best comic in the movies." And whom would she like to act with in the future? "Patrick Swayze. He's a beautiful guy in every way." (Johnny Ray Huston)

Voluptuous talents

Black has made more than 130 films; she's worked with everyone from a young Francis Ford Coppola (You're a Big Boy Now) to an old Alfred Hitchcock (Family Plot). Though some of her choices (Children of the Corn IV: The Gathering, also starring a pre-fame Naomi Watts) seem ill-guided, even these kookier offerings add up to a career that's never, ever been dull.

Though Easy Rider (1969) now looks pretty quaint with age, it's still a benchmark film, remembered not just for bringing counterculture to mainstream cinemagoers, but also for Jack Nicholson asking what dude means and pontificating, campfire-side, on Earth's extraterrestrial population. (At least that's how I like to remember Easy Rider). Black appears in the film's final third as one of the New Orleans gals ("the tall one") picked up by the film's antiheroes at the House of Blue Lights brothel. Her bad trip during the LSD-in-the-graveyard scene is shrill – and suitably unnerving.

The next year Nicholson and Black reteamed (with scenes together this time) for Five Easy Pieces, another film that isn't all that well preserved, even with all the Jack-ting. Black's the best thing going here; in her only Oscar-nominated performance (so far), she's an ever-so-trashy, Tammy Wynette-obsessed waitress who puts up with her perpetually unfaithful man (Nicholson) because she's apparently too dim-witted to really care. The scene where she defends television to Nicholson's snooty relatives may not be Five Easy Pieces' signature moment (that would be the "hold the chicken between your knees" diner scene), but it's a keeper all the same.

The mid-1970s were especially good to Black; she had memorable parts in The Great Gatsby, Day of the Locust, and Airport 1975 – the latter turn inspiring the title of a recent book of 1970s American cinema: The Stewardess Is Flying the Plane! Though she's only one member of Nashville's enormous cast, her big-haired Connie Smith makes an impression. "Study real hard because any one of you can grow up to be president!" she cheerfully advises a group of children, stage-side at the Grand Ole Opry, before launching – flat notes and all – into "Memphis," one of several songs Black composed for the film. Also priceless is the after-show, where Julie Christie (as herself) is introduced to Smith, who couldn't be more dismissive ("She can't even comb her hair!").

The year after Nashville, Black starred opposite Oliver Reed, Bette Davis, and a cackling Burgess Meredith in Burnt Offerings (1976), from Dark Shadows guru Dan Curtis. Filmed at Oakland's Dunsmuir House and Gardens, this gothic haunted-house tale – which borrows from Psycho and predates The Shining – features a possessed swimming pool, a valuable real estate lesson about deals that seem too good to be true, and a vigorous performance by a pregnant Black. Contemporary horror fans know Black best from her House of 1000 Corpses turn as the blowsy blond Mother Firefly (a role she did not, alas, reprise in The Devil's Rejects). On the Corpses DVD, director Rob Zombie notes that Black helped design her character's bordello-from-hell costumes; Black herself describes Mother as a cross between an Oakie and a nymphomaniac. Who else but Black could make that combination so convincing and endearing – and yet so terrifying? (Cheryl Eddy)

'A View of the Heart' preview and reception Wed/30, 8 p.m. Runs Dec. 7-10, 8 p.m.; Dec. 11, 5 p.m. (receptions after Wed., Sat., and Sun. performances), 142 Throckmorton Theatre, 142 Throckmorton, Mill Valley. $20-$60. (415) 383-9600, www.142throckmorton.com.