What Don Knotts and Daughter Karen ‘Butted Heads’ Over When She Was a Teenager

The Andy Griffith Show actor Don Knotts had his daughter, Karen Knotts, in 1954 with his first wife, Kathryn Metz (they also had a son together named Thomas). While there was a lot of love between Don and Karen, they disagreed on one major thing when Karen was a young teen. 

Don Knotts didn’t want daughter Karen to enter the world of show business  

Karen thinks of Don as a “great father.” But they did disagree about one thing. Karen wanted to act for as long as she could remember. Don didn’t think that was a good idea. 

”I always wanted to be an actress, even when I was young, but he said, ‘No, that’s not a good life for a child,’” she told the Murfreesboro Post in 2011. 

But when Karen auditioned for drama class in junior high she “came alive.”

“I thought, ‘Oh, I belong here. I’ve got to do this,’” she said. “And I was pretty good at it, so I decided to tell dad that I wanted to be an actress. I told him, and he kind of freaked out about it. He said, ‘It’s such a hard life. You don’t understand.’ We kind of butted heads.”

Don saw first-hand how difficult the business was. He wanted to protect his daughter from a life of hardship and disappointment. 

“He was afraid for me because he had seen so many people, friends, over time that couldn’t make it in show business and had so much talent,” she said. “He tried to talk me out of it for a while.”

Karen Knotts went on to become an actor

Don ended up supporting his daughter “100 percent.” When she and her brother were young, he took them on the set of The Shakiest Gun in the West, where they got to be extras. 

She went on to attend high school at Beverly Hills High School and then attended USC of Cinematic Arts for college. 

“I did go on to be an actress,” she said. “I’ve done tons of theater, some plays on the road with my dad, and written plays and do stand-up comedy.”

Karen has appeared in such TV shows and movies as One Day at a Time, Eight Is Enough, Archie Bunker’s Place, and Hobgoblins 2. In 1986 she was in The Andy Griffith Show reunion TV movie, Return to Mayberry as Opie Taylor’s secretary. 

“That was fantastic, working with him and Andy,” she said. “I felt like I was dreaming.”

What Don Knotts’ daughter Karen is up to now

At the time of her 2011 interview, Karen was a librarian in Los Angeles as well as an actor. After her father’s death in 2006, she began performing her one-woman show titled Tied Up in Knotts! She also wrote a book by the same name about being Don Knotts’ daughter. She still performs the long-running show, according to her website.  

Of the show she writes: 

“When my father, Don Knotts, passed away in February 2006, I wanted to pay tribute to him in the way I knew him best: as an amazing, loving dad. It’s true that Don Knotts was one of the greatest and most beloved comedic actors of his generation, with many awards to his credit! However, in my one-woman show TIED UP IN KNOTTS!, I try to capture the essense of Don, the man, because I always thought he was the funniest when he was just being himself.”