Charisma Carpenter
Charisma Carpenter was born on born July 23, 1970 in Las Vegas, Nevada to a Cherokee, Irish, Scottish, and Spanish mother and French and German father. Carpenter attended Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas. When she was 15, her family moved to Rosarito city, Mexico and then to San Diego where she attended Bonita Vista High School and Chula Vista School of the Creative and Performing Arts. After graduation, Carpenter traveled throughout Europe.
Once she returned to San Diego again, she worked as a video store clerk, an aerobics instructor, and in property management. In 1991, she was a San Diego Charger cheerleader, before beginning her Hollywood career. In 1992, she moved to Los Angeles.
Carpenter was discovered by a commercial agent while waiting tables in Los Angeles to save money for her college education. This led to her role on theatrical productions and more than twenty commercials.
She made her first television role in 1994 by appearing in an episode of Baywatch. Shortly after that, she landed a starring role on Aaron Spelling’s short-lived soap opera Malibu Shores.
In the June 2004 issue of Playboy magazine, Carpenter appeared in a ten-page nude layout and on the cover.When asked by People magazine in 2005 about her nude pictorial and whether or not she would ever pose for Playboy again, she replied “I don’t know. I did Playboy for a very specific reason. Not only was it a good financial move, but it was about the place I was at in my life. I had just had my son [Donovan] and I’d gained 50 lbs. during pregnancy. I wanted to get back to my old self. I wanted to feel desirable and sexy. So I thought, ‘What if I went full throttle?’”
Carpenter married Damian Hardy on October 5, 2002.On March 24, 2003, Carpenter gave birth to a son named Donovan Charles Hardy. In late 2007, the couple separated and their divorce was made final in July 2008.As a fitness enthusiast, her outdoor hobbies are biking, rollerblading, horseback riding, hiking, rock climbing, and sky-diving. Carpenter lives in Los Angeles.
