Her father, Pedro Antoni, was an artist who left the family scene soon after she was born, leaving the baby with her mother, Ursula Antoni-Orendt, an "all-round artist" who later became a production director with the DFF, East Germany's national broadcasting corporation.

Carmen-Maja made her camera debut at the age of eleven, as one of the three "Blue Streaks" in a Young Pioneer Cabaret programme on national television.

Still aged only 18, it was here that in 1964 she appeared as an exceptionally young "Grusche", the heroine in "The Caucasian Chalk Circle" by Bertolt Brecht.

[2] She has been a member of the Berliner Ensemble Theatre Company since 1976, and has recently (2005) appeared there as the lead protagonist in "Mother Courage and Her Children".

[2] Antoni built her career in the German Democratic Republic during the decades of German division, but following reunification hers has become a well-known television presence across German-speaking central Europe thanks in part to her appearances in the long-running (1994–2013) ZDF crime drama series Rosa Roth in which she played Karin von Lomanski, a close colleague of Police Commissioner Rosa Roth.