Karen Lancaume (born Karine Bach) (January 19, 1973 – January 28, 2005) was a French adult film star. Despite her short resumé of having appeared in only 29 films from her beginnings as an adult film star in 1997, she was quite a popular actress, with her natural beautiful looks and self-esteem, especially among the francophone public.

Born near Lyon, she spent her childhood in the Lyon countryside and completed her studies in communications. She was married to a DJ named Franck, but debts prompted her to work in the porn industry. She and her husband started doing scenes as a couple. In the 1997 film L'Indécente aux enfer she also started to have scenes with other partners. Once they had divorced, her ex-husband quit but Karen remained in the industry and continued to appear in pornographic films both in Europe and the United States.

She was well known to exhibit lewd abandon in her sex scenes. For example in World Sex Tour 21, she engages in group sex with three male actors. This scene includes Lancaume performing anal sex and double penetration. However, she always refused to appear in BDSM and/or gangbang scenes.

She is best known internationally as Nadine in the 2000 film Baise-moi.

Only once she turned 19 did this demure girl succumb to the charm of a holiday flirt and that night changed Karine thoroughly. Sweet country bumpkin by day, hot vamp on the look-out for adventures by night. Once she had finished the French equivalent to grammar school she left her home and went on to study advertising in Lyon. To earn some extra cash she began working behind the bar of a discotheque at weekends (quite handy for meeting men too). And indeed, she soon met her husband to be: Franck the disc-jockey.

Karen and Franck got married and wanted to have many children, but their financial difficulties stopped them from fulfilling that dream. The financial problems kept getting worse and when the couple spotted an ad by 'Marc Dorcel', the love-birds applied. They agreed to do the hardcore-production under one condition: They'd only shoot scenes between the two of them. The movie was called L'INDECENTE AUX ENFERS and happened to be one of the biggest French productions of 1996. But trouble started right away: Franck was having problems with his 'male-prowess' and Karen Lancaume had to finish the shoot without him. The director and producer were very happy with Karen and she was offered more work. She accepted and a new star of French erotic movies was born!

She kept shooting movies for Marc Dorcel, worked with Patrice Cabanel and all other greats of the French porn-biz. She got more and more recognition and was nominated for the 'Hot D'Or' award. Her marriage with Franck was beyond saving, despite (or maybe because) of her success and they ended up getting divorced. Karen Lancaume continued climbing the ladder of success to the top and became one of the favourite and most widely known European porn actresses. Even the biggest and best porn directors such as Andrew Blake, Luca Damiano or Mario Salieri were very eager to work with her.

But the high-point of her career should be provided by a woman: In 2000 Virginie Despentes cast Karen Lancaume for the leading role in her post-feminist scandal-movie BAISE-MOI (under the name Karen Bach). The movie, in which among other things a man is shot in the ass and which stars a range of porn-stars (such as Raphaela Anderson, Elodie Chérie, Zenza Raggi), sparked a world-wide debate about art, violence and pornography. The media blew up the movie out of all proportion, calling it an big scandal.