Former child star Debbie Turner, most known for her role as Marta von Trapp in The Sound of Music, is opening up about her decision to leave Hollywood shortly after her breakout film.
“I was a floral designer for many years. I’ve designed weddings,” Turner, 69, told People in an interview published on Monday, December 22, while discussing the career path she chose after stepping away from acting. “I even designed one in the Leopoldskron Palace in Salzburg many years ago. I’ve done some really nice weddings.”
Turner said she has even worked as a “decorator for the White House for Christmas.”
“That was a really neat experience — probably one of the most physically grueling and cool things I’ve ever done,” she told the outlet before detailing her work at the White House in 2017.
“It was a week-long deal. It was me and 149 other designers that they put to task to do all these things to make the magic of Christmas at the White House happen. So I was just thrilled to be a part of that,” Turner said.
She also recalled a “pretty amazing” yet frightening experience she had during the project.
“The most proud moment of that house was doing the largest tree, which is in the Blue Room. They call it the People’s Tree. And I got to decorate the People’s Tree, which was kind of the centerpiece or the focal piece of the entire White House,” the former actress explained. “I had to go up on scaffolding. I almost fell and killed myself. It was really cool.”
Turner was 7 years old when she portrayed Marta, the second-youngest daughter of the von Trapp family, in The Sound of Music, which was released in 1965. More than 10 years later, she appeared in the 1979 film North Dallas Forty, which marked her only other acting credit to date.
Turner previously opened up about her post-Sound of Music career in a September interview with People, revealing that she struggled to land other roles after the musical movie.
“Angela [Cartwright] was already an established actress beforehand. I wasn’t. I was a TV commercial actress,” Turner told the outlet, explaining that many of her Sound of Music costars already had acting careers before joining the film. Cartwright, now 73, had made her on-screen debut at 3 years old in Somebody Up There Likes Me prior to her portrayal of Brigitta von Trapp.
“I’d go in interviews and they’d go, ‘Oh, so you were in The Sound of Music?’” Turner continued. “And then it’s like, I don’t know if I got put on a pedestal or I got thrown out the side – I don’t know. I just didn’t get jobs.”
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After leaving Hollywood, Turner settled down with husband Rick Larson, whom she married in 1980. The couple shares four daughters.
Though Turner told People in her December interview that she would like to work at the White House again, for the most part, she is “kind of retired.”
“My husband retired this past year and I thought, ‘Well, I don’t need to keep doing this.’ I’ve been doing weddings for a long time and, as a wedding florist, it’s a very taxing job. And so, I mean, physically hard to do it. I love designing, but I just turned 69, and it’s like, ‘I’m getting too old for this stuff,’” she said. “So I’m kind of pulling back. I mean, if something came along that would be really amazing, I’d probably step back into it. But for all practical purposes, I’m retired. So now it’s grandkids time!”
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