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Charisma Carpenter Biography

Charisma Lee Carpenter (born July 23, 1970) is an American actress. She is best known for playing the character Cordelia Chase in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel.

Personal life: Carpenter was born in Las Vegas, Nevada, where she attended Bishop Gorman High School. At 15, the family moved to Rosarito B.C., Mexico, and then to Chula Vista (a suburb of San Diego) where she attended Chula Vista High and Bonita Vista High. After graduation, she was a San Diego Chargers cheerleader in 1991 before beginning her Hollywood career. She had also dabbled in sky-diving. She married her French fiancé Damien Hardy on October 5, 2002 and she gave birth to son Donavan Charles Hardy on March 24, 2003.

Career: Carpenter was discovered by a commercial agent when she was a waitress. This led to several roles on TV advertisements. She made guest appearances in Baywatch and Miss Match, and she has had a role in Malibu Shores. Her best known role was that of Cordelia on TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

After 7 years playing Cordelia Chase, 3 years on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and 4 years on Angel, Charisma was not invited back as a regular for Angel's fifth and final season. She agreed to return for the 100th episode although she wasn't asked until Sarah Michelle Gellar turned down the chance to guest star in the episode.

She also had a recurring role as a psychic demon called The Seer in the popular witch drama Charmed, appearing in three episodes.

Carpenter modeled nude for the June 2004 issue of Playboy magazine. She made the decision to pose as a way to motivate herself to lose her pregnancy weight. The photos were taken ten months after she gave birth to her son.

Carpenter had a recurring role as Kendall Casablancas in the TV series Veronica Mars for the 2005-2006 season. Charisma recently starred in Voodoo Moon by writer/director Kevin VanHook, as well as an assortment of made-for-television movies. One such recent movie was called Relative Chaos on ABC Family, costarring with Nicholas Brendon, one of her costars from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Carpenter has a large scar on her belly from a childhood accident. While five years old, and playing around a swimming pool that was still under construction, she fell onto a piece of rebar. The scar was incorporated into Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the episode "Lovers Walk", when her character fell onto an exposed piece of rebar.

Carpenter has four tattoos; a tribal sun on her lower back that represents life, a rosary on her left wrist as a reminder to stay centered, D2 on the inside of her right wrist to represent the names of her husband and son, and the infinity symbol on her left ring finger beneath her wedding ring. Carpenter became good friends with Holly Marie Combs during the filming of See Jane Date and this friendship led to her three episode guest stint on Charmed. 

Charisma Lee Carpenter was born on July 23, 1970, in Las Vegas, NV to Don and Chris Carpenter. She began studying ballet at five and was a participant in numerous beauty contests. She attended Las Vegas’ Bishop Gorman High School before her family moved to Mexico when she was 15. While living in Mexico, Carpenter commuted to Bonita High near San Diego, CA before finally graduating from Chula Vista School of Creative and Performing Arts.

By 1991, Carpenter finally used her skills as a one-time high school cheerleader to leave behind a series of mundane jobs to become a member of the pom-pom shaking San Diego Chargers’ cheerleading squad. The following year, she upped the ante on her dreams, moving to Los Angeles, where she was "discovered" while working as a waitress. Signed by a commercial agent, the brunette beauty was soon booked on several television spots, which in turn led to her landing her first role on a 1994 episode of “Baywatch” (NBC/Syndicated, 1989-2001). This part helped her earn a subsequently bigger gig – that of Ashley Green – on uber-producer Aaron Spelling’s primetime soap, “Malibu Shores” (NBC, 1996) – a show that, despite having an extraordinarily limited run, managed to produce a number of successful actors, including Barry “7th Heaven” Watson and Keri “Felicity” Russell.

Although she appeared on several other forgotten shows in the months on “Malibu Shores,” Carpenter’s career did not truly begin until she auditioned for “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Despite being passed over for the lead role (which went to Sarah Michelle Gellar, Carpenter caught the attention of the show’s producers and was cast as Cordelia Chase, the archetypal shallow cheerleader who reluctantly at first, joins in the fight for good alongside Buffy. At the show’s fictional Sunnydale High School, Cordelia was at once popular, rich, beautiful and cruel. Eventually, however, her social status plummeted – partially as a result of her joining Buffy’s clique of vampire hunters.

After two years of paying her dues on “Buffy,” Carpenter moved on to a new show, but did not stray far from the Buffy universe – or “Buffyverse” – as fans called it. Turns out, her character Cordelia the cheerleader moved from Sunnydale to Los Angeles where she joined fellow “Buffy” alum David Boreanez on the spin-off “Angel” to continue doing battle with underworld demons. Although she was written off the show in 2003, fan support brought her back for “Angel’s” 100th episode in 2004.

With few exceptions – among them the 2001 comedy “The Groomsmen” – Carpenter spent her career in television. After leaving the “Buffyverse,” Carpenter appeared in multi-episode guest arcs on “Charmed” (WB, 1998-2006) and the failed “Miss Match” (NBC, 2003) with a series of single episode appearances on other shows. She also made quite the splash w/ “Buffy” nerds the world over when she appeared on the cover of the June, 2004 issue of Playboy magazine, which inside, featured in a 10-page spread of the former vampire-killing babe. In 2005, Carpenter returned to television in a recurring role as the gold-digging trophy-wife Kendall Casablancas on the “Buffy”-influenced detective series, "Veronica Mars" (UPN/CW, 2004- ), starring break-out star, Kristen Bell.

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