She would later star in Lost in Space and make numerous guest appearances on television shows. Her first success in acting was the role of Lorelei in the 1965 movie Beach Blanket Bingo.
She first appeared in a 1961 episode ('Bang! You're Dead') of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, alongside Billy Mumy, who would later co-star with Kristen in Lost in Space. Knowing her Scandinavian heritage she adopted the more European sounded, 'Marta' and used Marta Kristen as her stage name. Later, she moved to Los Angeles, California, with her family in 1959 when her father was on a sabbatical Marta remained there, with a guardian and is graduate of Santa Monica High School. Marta also has an adopted brother which her foster parents adopted later. Her foster father was a of Professor of Education, at Wayne University, Detroit, Michigan. She spent her first years in an orphanage in Norway, and then was adopted in 1949 by an American couple from Detroit, Michigan, Harold Oliver Soderquist and Bertha, and renamed her Martha Annalise Soderquist.
Kristen was born Birgit Annalisa Rusanen in Oslo, Norway, to a Finnish mother and a German soldier father who was killed during World War II.
