Charmian Carr, who played Liesl von Trapp in The Sound of Music (1965), died Saturday, her family confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. She was 73. Carr was 21 when she sang “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” as the eldest of the seven von Trapp children in the Academy Award–winning musical. The Sound of Music was her first acting part. After her second, and final, starring role, in the 1966 TV movie Evening Primrose, she started her own interior-design company, Charmian Carr Design. In the early aughts, Carr wrote about her experience as Liesl in two books: Forever Liesl (2000), a memoir of her time filming The Sound of Music with Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, and Letters to Liesl (2001). She stayed in contact with her onscreen siblings throughout her life and frequently participated in sing-alongs and fan events. Her family reports that she died of a “rare form of dementia.” Carr is survived by two daughters, four siblings, and four grandchildren.
