Carol Burnett's 3 Daughters: All About Carrie, Jody and Erin

Carol Burnett has three children with her ex-husband Joe Hamilton

Carol Burnett is both a comedy legend and a mom of three.

Burnett first found fame on Broadway and went on to become a tv star in her groundbreaking series, The Carol Burnett Show, as well as a film star with such movies as Annie and Noises Off. She's been married three times; her first husband was her college sweetheart Don Saroyan, whom she was married to from 1955 to 1962. She married her second husband, Joe Hamilton, a producer on her show, in 1963 and together they had three daughters: Carrie, Jody and Erin. The pair divorced in 1984, and Burnett married musician Brian Miller in 2001.

After the 2016 SAG Awards, Burnett shared a story about being a young mother in the comedy world. When she was pregnant with Jody, her friend Lucille Ball threw her a baby shower in a way only the I Love Lucy star could.

"It was a black-tie baby shower, with men attending!" Burnett said. "Her husband was comedian Gary Morton. He opened up the baby gifts and he did routines on everything. It was one of the funniest things ever."

As a mom, Burnett always stressed to her children, the importance of following their own creative paths. "I've always been asked why I don't put my daughters on television," Burnett told Interview magazine in 1978. "I always say, 'Listen, my old lady didn't have a show of her own. Let them get theirs.'"

Nonetheless, Burnett's kids all found their way into the business: Carrie, who died in 2002, was an actress and writer; Jody is a film producer and podcast host; and Erin is a singer.

As her daughters grew up, she chose to be candid about her family's history with addiction, beginning with her parents. She has since advocated for resources like Al-Anon and Alateen for those with loved ones who struggle.

"They help you realize that you're not the problem," Burnett told Marlo Thomas of the support groups. "You can't cure them and you didn't cause it. So, you have to look out for yourself."

Here's everything to know about Carol Burnett's children.

Carrie Louise Hamilton

Burnett and Joe Hamilton's eldest daughter, Carrie Louise Hamilton, was born in New York City on Dec. 5, 1963. Although Burnett was a Broadway star at the time, she didn't become a bonafide television celebrity until 1967 with the premiere of The Carol Burnett Show. But, as Burnett told Interview in 1978, her kids didn't really watch her series.

"Well, it depends who the guests are," she said. "They certainly wanted to come to the taping when Steve Martin was a guest. My oldest is quite a critic. My feeling is they ought to get kids up to the networks and have them watch things for their age group. Kids are so honest. They really tell it like it is."

When Carrie was a teenager, she began using drugs and drinking heavily. She went to rehab three times before getting sober. "I'm happy to say she got off drugs, but during those three years it was hell," Burnett told PEOPLE in 2016. "At one point I had to throw her into a rehab place before she was 18 and she hated me. She totally hated what I was doing to her."

Carrie reflected on her struggles with addiction in an interview with PEOPLE in 1979. "I was always Carol Burnett's daughter," the then-15-year-old said. "When I got high, I wasn't anymore. I wanted my own image."

While the mother and daughter had a strained relationship during that time, they eventually reconciled and grew extremely close. Carrie went on to find success in music and acting, both of which she studied at Pepperdine University. She appeared in shows like Fame and movies like Tokyo Pop and sang with a band called Big Business. She was married to musician Mark Templin from 1994 to 1998.

Carrie and her mom collaborated on a play, Hollywood Arms, based on Burnett's 1986 memoir One More Time — but Carrie never got to see her work onstage. She was diagnosed with lung cancer in August 2001 and died of cancer-related pneumonia on Jan. 20, 2002. She was 38 years old.

Hollywood Arms was scheduled to open at Chicago's Goodman Theatre that spring. In her grief, Burnett wanted to call it off. "Carrie passed away and I ... Well, I'm her mom, and I didn't want to get out of bed," she later said during a 2022 appearance on the Dear Multi-Hyphenate podcast. However, her husband, Miller, encouraged her to continue. "And my husband — we were going into previews — said, 'Carol, you owe this not only to Carrie but you owe it to [director Hal Prince] to finish.' "

Burnett recalled being on the plane to Chicago and asking her late daughter for a sign that she'd be there in spirit. When she got to her hotel, there was a bouquet of birds of paradise waiting for her. "[Carrie] had a bird of paradise tattooed on her right shoulder," Burnett continued. "I called Hal and said, 'How did you know? That was Carrie's favorite flower.' And he said, 'I didn't. I just called down and said send up something exotic to Carol's room.' "

The next night at dinner, the restaurant presented her with a bottle of complimentary champagne. "On the label it said, 'Louise,' " Burnett said. "That was Carrie's middle name and my mother's name."

Burnett's connection to her late daughter is ever present.

"She never leaves me," Burnett told PEOPLE in 2018. "I just feel her."

The comedian echoed the sentiment in her April 2023 cover story for PEOPLE. "There's not a day or almost a moment goes by that she's not with me," she said of Carrie. "We worked together, we laughed together, we cried together. She was a force."

Jody Hamilton, 57

Jody Hamilton, Burnett and Hamilton's second child, was born in Los Angeles on Jan. 18, 1967.

"My mom and dad were so cool," her sister Erin told PEOPLE in 1999. "They wanted me and my sisters Carrie and Jody to go through whatever we had to go through to find out who we are."

In the early 1980s, as Burnett and Hamilton were divorcing, they sent Jody and Erin to live with friends in Hawaii so they wouldn't have to witness the dissolution of their marriage. "We all kind of knew it was happening," Erin recalled. "We told them to do whatever they had to do to be happy."

Jody now works as a film and TV producer. In 1998, she and Carrie and other artists founded an independent film company called Namethkuf. Carrie wrote and directed two short films under the company.

In 2001, Jody also produced a retrospective of Burnett's early career called Carol Burnett: Show Stoppers, which drew more than 30 million viewers. The show aired a few months after Carrie's lung cancer diagnosis. Burnett first wanted to call it off but Burnett's costar Tim Conway later told PEOPLE that before she died, "It was Carrie who said, 'You have to do this, Mom,' "

Since 2014, Jody has been a co-host of the podcast From The Bunker. According to the Wall Street Journal, she and her husband, musician and songwriter Lonny Paul Johnson, live together in L.A.

Erin Kate Hamilton, 55

The youngest of Burnett and Hamilton's daughters, Erin Kate Hamilton, was born on Aug. 14, 1968, in L.A. In a 1999 interview with PEOPLE, she recalled what it was like growing up with a superstar mother and visiting the set of her mom's show as a child. "It mesmerized me," said Erin. "And she mesmerized me. But it seemed normal: 'Oh, Mom's playing dress-up.' "

After high school, Erin enrolled at Bennington College in Vermont, but dropped out to follow the Grateful Dead around the country as they toured. Eventually, she wanted more. "I decided I wanted to be the band that people followed," she said, "instead of always following the band."

She became a professional singer, performing with jazz and blues bands before embarking on a solo career as a dance music artist. Her album One World debuted in 1999 and has since opened for artists like Bette Midler and Whitney Houston.

In 1995, Erin married musician Trae Carlson; the couple had one son, Zachary, before divorcing in 1998. She then married to Tony West, with whom she shares son Dylan.

Erin has struggled with addiction for much of her adult life. In August 2020, Burnett and Miller petitioned for legal guardianship of Erin's son Dylan because of "addiction issues and other circumstances" affecting Erin, per the court filing.

"Guardianship will be for oversight purposes concerning his health, education and welfare and not intended to deny him nor the parents proper visitation with one another," Burnett said in a statement to PEOPLE at the time. "We look forward to recovery being the next stepping stone towards normalization and ask for privacy at this time to allow that process to occur."

Burnett and Miller were granted temporary guardianship of Dylan in September 2020. In 2022, a permanent guardian was named.

Ahead of her 90th birthday in 2023, Burnett reflected on the lessons she learned as a mother, saying, "Life can change on a dime. So just be grateful for today what you have."

She also added of the legacy that she hopes to leave behind: "I made people laugh, made them feel good when they might have been down. In my fan mail, many say it was the only time the family would get together, to watch and laugh. And that sometimes they were lonesome and were cheered up by our show. That's a good feeling."

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