Charisma Carpenter

Charisma Lee Carpenter is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Cordelia Chase in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel, for which she was nominated for four Saturn Awards. Carpenter was born in Las Vegas, Nevada, the daughter of Chris, a bird sanctuary worker, and Don Carpenter, a salesman. She is of French and German descent on her father's side and Cherokee and Spanish descent on her mother's side. Her parents named her after an Avon perfume. Carpenter attended Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas; she was also a part of a song-and-dance... troupe which performed in the Las Vegas area beginning when she was nine. 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 worked as a San Diego Charger cheerleader.
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