Her first television appearance was in 1961 on bandleader Ted Steele’s Dance Party, based in Newark, New Jersey. Her first professional job was on NBC’s The Bell Telephone Hour as a dancer when she was 14 years old. She was brought on board by the show’s choreographer Matt Mattox. Kristen was a dancer in the ensemble of the 1967 musical Henry, Sweet Henry, based upon The World of Henry Orient. This was the first of several collaborations with the choreographer Michael Bennett, with whom she later worked on the television show Let Us Entertain You (starring Robert Morse) and the show Pinocchio (with Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits).

Ilene Kristen was born Ilene Schatz in Brooklyn, New York. She is the daughter of Arthur Schatz of Williamsburg, Brooklyn and Myrna Levin of Boro Park, Brooklyn. Her father was a hairdresser who owned a series of beauty parlors across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Palm Beach, Florida. She has a younger sister, Karen Schatz. Ilene lived in Brooklyn until the age of 13. She then moved to Forest Hills, Queens and lived there for two years. In 1968, she moved to Manhattan’s Upper West Side on West 76th Street. She attended PS 217 in Brooklyn, Russell Sage Junior High School in Queens, and Professional Children’s School in Manhattan. Upon graduating high school, she went to Finch College where she majored in Drama and minored in Art History.

She was set to replace the lead actress in the show Steambath, but the show was closed before Kristen got to take over the role. Its producer Dick Scanga felt bad for Kristen, so he offered her a job in his producing office. She ended up working odd jobs on major Broadway productions: catering the opening-night party of the show Lenny (which later became the 1974 film by Bob Fosse) and gold-leafing in Robin Wagner’s scenery department for Jesus Christ Superstar. She made her screen debut in the female lead role in the 1971 comedy film Preacherman.

From 1990-1991, she starred in Loving, portraying Norma Gilpin, a dees-dems-doze broad from Brooklyn. She was coupled with the Tony Award-winning actor and director Walter Bobbie, who had originated the role of Roger in the Broadway production of Grease alongside Kristen in 1972. After that stint, Kristen did three off-Broadway productions: All That Glitters, Trust, and The Gig at the Goodspeed. She was also Madeleine Thompson, an alcoholic wannabe socialite, on Another World.

In 1975, she auditioned for and landed the role of Delia Ryan in the ABC daytime soap opera Ryan’s Hope. She worked on the show until 1979, when she moved to California. In Los Angeles, she appeared in film Why Would I Lie? starring Treat Williams. She played Winona, a prostitute, in The Lady in Red (her scene was with Christopher Lloyd), then did an episode of Family.

In 1977, Kristen founded the Jean Renoir Cinema with Ray Blanco, a young Cuban anti-Castro emigré, and Nancy Newell, one of the first women ever admitted to the Projectionists Guild. Through Blanco’s distribution company, Bauer International (later Liberty Films), the Renoir saw through the first U.S. theatrical distributions of Wim Wenders’s early German features (including Kings of the Road and Alice in the Cities), as well as films by Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, Alexander Kluge, Gregory Nava’s The Confessions of Amans, and Martha Coolidge’s Not a Pretty Picture. The Jean Renoir also presented the first American screenings of films from Luis Buñuel’s Mexican period, including Illusion Travels by Streetcar, Daughter of Deceit, and El Bruto. The Renoir also mounted one of the first significant film festivals devoted to Cuban cinema in the United States.

In 1982, she did a stint on One Life to Live as Georgina Whitman. She appeared in the comedy revue Strange Behavior (1983-84), which led to her being considered for a role on NBC’s Saturday Night Live. She also starred in Charles Strouse’s and Warren Leight’s Mayor, the musical based on Ed Koch’s memoir of the same name. She played Leona Helmsley, the “Queen of Mean,” among other characters.

In 1986, after starring in Moss Hart’s Light Up the Sky, Kristen was asked to return to Ryan’s Hope. Kristen, always adept with comedy, says that her last four years at Ryan’s Hope were happy ones, as the writers gave her a lot of funny material to work with. During this period (1986-90), Kristen toured around the club circuits, performing with rock bands and jazz musicians at Mikell’s in the Upper West Side. She did another off-Broadway show, Cowboy, a musical tribute to the life of the painter Charlie “Kid” Russell.

After returning to New York City in 2001, she was approached for the role of the gambling, beer-guzzling and always-inappropriate hairdresser Roxy Balsom on One Life to Live. She was asked the day before the events of September 11, 2001. At that point in time, she had begun to question the importance of acting; she’d always seen performance as a healing art, and felt that the kind of character that she wanted to create should be entertaining, vivacious, and funny—because people needed it. She ended up playing Roxy Balsom for ten years. Kristen was nominated for two consecutive Daytime Emmy Awards in 2004 and 2005 in the Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series category for her role as Roxy in One Life to Live.

In 2015, Kristen released her first album, I’m Not Done With U Yet!, produced by Scott Yahney and self-penned with various co-writers. It is available on Amazon and iTunes.

Kristen is a supporter of the emerging digital series genre and has appeared on the Daytime Emmy-winning series The Bay and Pride: The Series. In 2018, she played Dolly Faye in Mélange. The pilot featured Morgan Fairchild and was written and produced by Tom D’Angora.