Her first television appearance was in 1961 [citation needed] on bandleader Ted Steele's Dance Party, based in Newark, New Jersey.
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 appeared in the comedy revue Strange Behavior (1983-84), which led to her being considered for a role on NBC’s Saturday Night Live.
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 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.
In the late 1990s, Kristen served as the co-artistic director and literary manager for Musical Theatre Works, alongside Gordon Greenberg.
After returning to New York City in 2001, she was approached the day before the September 11 attacks for the role of the gambling, beer-guzzling and always-inappropriate hairdresser Roxy Balsom on One Life to Live.
[4][5] 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.
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.
As a songwriter, Ilene has penned album cuts for teenage phenom Kaitlyn Lusk and jazz guitarist Chuck Loeb, as well as produced for the label Tuxedo Records.
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.
[8] 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.