Charmian Carr
Charmian Carr (born December 27, 1942) is an American actress and singer. She is mainly known for her role as Liesl, the eldest Von Trapp daughter in The Sound of Music where she starred with Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Nicholas Hammond, Heather Menzies, Duane Chase, Angela Cartwright, Debbie Turner, and Kym Karath.
Carr was born Charmian Farnon in Chicago, Illinois. She is the second child of vaudeville actress Rita Oehman and musician Brian Farnon, who named her Charmian after a character from Shakespeare's play Antony and Cleopatra. She has two sisters, one older and one younger. Her sisters are Shannon Farnon and Darleen Carr.
While Charmian was attending college part-time and working for a doctor, her mother got her an audition for a role in The Sound of Music. Charmian's mother never even asked her if she wanted to try out for the part, but she grew up in a show business family and she knew that for her getting a part in a film would be a much bigger deal for her mother than earning a college diploma. Director Robert Wise thought Farnon too long a surname for her, and after he had given her a list of single syllable surnames, she chose Carr. She beat out Geraldine Chaplin, Patty Duke, Mia Farrow and Sharon Tate for the role of Liesl in the film.
The film was on the whole a very happy experience for her. However, during the filming of her dance scene with Rolf in the gazebo, she slid straight through a window of the gazebo, because the costume crew had forgotten to put no-slip pads on her shoes, and she "had to complete the scene in agony."
Carr also appeared in Evening Primrose, a one-hour musical written by Stephen Sondheim, which aired on television's ABC Stage 67 in 1966. The male lead was Anthony Perkins. She has written two books, Forever Liesl and Letters to Liesl.
While publicising The Sound of Music after its release, Carr met and married Jay Brent in May 1967. She retired from acting to raise her two daughters, Jennifer and Emily, and to establish an interior decorating company. The marriage lasted until 1991. She now has two grandchildren, Emma and Derek.
Carr now owns and operates Charmian Carr Designs in Encino, California. Her interior decorating clients included Ernest Lehman, screenwriter for The Sound of Music; Michael Jackson, who hired her because he was a fan of the film; and other cast members from the film.
On December 12, 2007, Carr made a rare television appearance as a guest on Loose Women where she shared some of her memories of making The Sound of Music with the hosts.
Carr reunited with all of her co-stars from The Sound of Music on The Oprah Winfrey Show in October 2010 to celebrate the 45th anniversary of The Sound of Music.
“Someone once told me that children are like kites. You struggle just to get them in the air; they crash; you add a longer tail. Then they get caught in a tree; you climb up and bring them down, and untangle the string; you run to get them aloft again. Finally, the kite is airborne, and it flies higher and higher, as you let out more string, until it's so high in the sky, it looks like a bird. And if the string snaps, and you've done your job right, the kite will continue to soar in the wind, all by itself.”