Bio
Charisma Carpenter is an American actress best known for her role as Cordelia Chase in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-1999) and its spin-off Angel (1999-2004).
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 married her French fiancé Damien Hardy on October 5, 2002 and she gave birth to son Donavan Charles Hardy on March 24, 2003.
Carpenter was discovered by a commercial agent while working as a waitress. This led to several roles in TV advertisements. She made guest appearances in Baywatch and Miss Match, and she has had a role in Malibu Shores.
After seven years of playing Cordelia Chase, Carpenter returned only for Angel's 100th episode in the fifth and final season as she thought Cordelia fans deserved closure despite the controversy of her unexplained removal from the show.
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 as a psychic demon called The Seer.
Carpenter appeared on the cover and posed for a nude pictorial in 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 has played three characters with the ability to tell the future. In Angel, her character, Cordelia, received visions from The Powers That Be. On Charmed, she played Kira, the Seer, who counted premonitions among her powers. In Voodoo Moon, she could tell the future through her drawings.
Carpenter had a recurring role as Kendall Casablancas in the TV series Veronica Mars for the 2005-2006 season, appearing in 11 episodes.
Charisma recently starred in Voodoo Moon by writer/director Kevin VanHook, as well as an assortment of made-for-television movies, including Relative Chaos (2006).