Charmian Carr was born Charmian Farnon on December 28, 1942. She got
her name because, supposedly, her father liked the name after reading
William Shakespeare's
"Antony and Cleopatra". Charmian was the name of one of Cleopatra's
maids. She was the second of three daughters. Her mother,
Rita Oehmen, had been a vaudeville actress
with her brother Eddy, and her father,
Brian Farnon, was a musician. She remembers
her childhood as very nice, because her older sister
Shannon Farnon was always there to watch
out for her and their younger sister,
Darleen Carr. She moved from Chicago to
California when she was 13 and her father left her mother a few years
after that. The girls hardly saw their father after that.
She wanted to travel and to visit Europe, little knowing that a movie
she would make would be partially shot in Europe. She worked as a
doctor's assistant for awhile until a friend of her mother's asked her
to audition for the part of "Liesl Von Trapp" in the movie,
Meine Lieder, meine Träume (1965). Her
fictional family became part of her real family and she considers
Nicholas Hammond (who played
her brother "Freidrich Von Trapp") her real brother. After she made the
movie, she spent much of the next several years promoting the movie
around the world.
During a lull in the touring, she met and married Jay Brent and became
the mother of two girls. She continued acting for a while, but decided
that she wanted to stay home and raise her children. After her children
were grown, she began a decorating company and met
Michael Jackson, who became one
of her clients. Other clients included members of her "Sound of Music"
family, including
Heather Menzies and her
husband Robert Urich and
Ernest Lehman.
She got divorced from Jay in 1991. In the late 1990s, she wrote a book
about her life and her experiences being Liesl, called "Forever
Liesl".
