YONKERS — Karen Lynn Gorney is best remembered by movie fans as John Travolta’s dance partner and love interest in “Saturday Night Fever” (1977) and a memorable star turn on the daytime TV drama “All My Children.”
But she put the disco days in her rearview mirror and went on to enjoy a varied 40-year career on stage, film and television.
Her immediate concern, she said Monday in an interview, is not dance fever. It’s getting her latest movie project, “Clifford, the Big Red Dog,” directed by Walt Becker, back on track after Paramount Studios’ live-action production was postponed by the coronavirus pandemic.
“A young girl’s love for a puppy made him grow really, really large,” Gorney said of the children’s comedy adventure. Gorney’s co-stars include Rosie Perez, John Cleese and David Alan Grier.
Gorney, 75, will be honored Saturday as the recipient of the second annual Lifetime Achievement Award at the Hunter Mountain Film Festival, which will be a virtual event due to COVID-19 concerns.
The award recognizes an individual who has performed an outstanding service and accomplishment spanning a career in television and film, according to film festival organizers. The award is presented to the performer who, during his or her lifetime, has made outstanding contributions to the television, film and web industries.
The halt to film production around the world can be blamed on the pandemic, and the standstill gets Gorney bristling.
“We have to get over this black plague,” said Gorney, an avowed fan of 11th-century history and culture. “We have to get back to filmmaking. Something very nervous is going on.”
Another upcoming movie co-starring Gorney is “First One In,” a comedy written and directed by Gina O’Brien about a real-estate agent (Kate Foster) who is fired from a popular reality show and teams up with a group of misfit tennis players in a do-or-die match.
One of Gorney’s lesser-known roles came in one of 1997’s biggest box-office hits. She gave a brief but funny vocal performance in “Men in Black” as the announcer on the futuristic public-address system in MIB headquarters.
Gorney’s first love is the theater, where she has carved out a unique career on stages large and small.
“It’s my bread and butter, my meat and potatoes,” said Gorney, who gave new meaning to the term “cast against type” in the Shakespearean arena.
She played the title role in “Richard III,” reprised the role in “Henry VI Part 3” and portrayed Friar Laurence in “Romeo and Juliet.”
“Actors are special,” Gorney said. “They may be different in gender, but they have the same soul. It’s just different body language. Men have always played women, so why not the other way around?”
Her favorite film, she said, is Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” and she acknowledges being moved by “Ray,” the Ray Charles biopic starring Jamie Foxx, and Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained.”
Her father, Jay Gorney, a producer-composer whose hits include the classic songs “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” and “You’re My Thrill,” is memorialized on “Hot Moonlight!” an album of her dad’s hits.
The soul group Tavares wrote a love song for Gorney’s character, Stephanie, in “Saturday Night Fever.” It was called “More Than a Woman.” Forty-three years later, Gorney has moved on through a multi-faceted performing career. More than a disco queen, more than an actress.