[1] When she was 15, Charny skipped school to go to an audition, gaining a role as a "Shark" girl in a production of West Side Story that toured Australia.
Her first big break came in early 1965, when she was cast as one of the featured dancers in the weekly NBC musical variety series Hullabaloo, which aired until spring of 1966.
She was the lead female dancer in "The Rich Man's Frug" sequence in the original Broadway production of Sweet Charity and reprised the role in the movie version (1969).
From 1970 to 1986, she frequently appeared on television shows including The Night Stalker, Kojak, The Rockford Files, Starsky & Hutch, The Incredible Hulk and others.
She notes that growing up in Brooklyn, she was inspired to model the human form by watching her father build larger-than-life nude sand sculptures at Brighton Beach.