Sarah Michelle Gellar on The Zone, on YTV

Sarah Michelle Gellar (born April 14, 1977) was the leading actress in the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She was born to a Jewish family in New York City and has been acting since the age of 4, when she did a commercial for Burger King. Her best friend as a child was Melissa Joan Hart who later played Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

Gellar's major break was in 1992, in the teen soap opera Swan's Crossing. From there, she moved on to the long-running soap opera, All My Children, where she played the conniving character Kendall Hart Lang, long-lost daughter of principal character Erica Kane (played by Susan Lucci). In 1995, at the age of eighteen, she won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Leading Actress in a Drama Series. Gellar left the series later that year after highly-publicized fights with Lucci, who was, by many accounts (reported by, among others, soap columnist Michael Logan), jealous of Sarah Michelle's Emmy win; this is due to Lucci receiving over a dozen nominations and never winning. Continuous on-set squabbles would haunt Gellar's reputation throughout her career.

Gellar left All My Children in 1995, and landed the lead in Buffy the Vampire Slayer created by Joss Whedon. The role made her a cult icon in the United States and the UK.

Though many regarded her character as a feminist icon, Gellar told Detour magazine: "I hate the word 'feminist.' It has a bad connotation of women who don't shave their legs or under their arms."

Sarah Michelle Gellar, prominently featured on a Soap Opera Digest cover, dated September 24, 2002.

While continuing in that role, she attempted to capitalize on her television fame in order to create a career for herself in motion pictures. She has had only intermittent success. After small roles in the popular thrillers I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream 2, Gellar starred in the disastrous flop Simply Irresistible. This film, rumored to be the last film ever watched by critic Gene Siskel, featured a magical crab and borrowed heavily from Like Water for Chocolate. Gellar's next film was the steamy Cruel Intentions, a modern-day retelling of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Also in 1999, she made an appearance in the Stone Temple Pilots music video Sour Girl. She then went on to play a lead role in Harvard Man.

Gellar finally found box office success playing Daphne in Scooby-Doo, a live-action adaption of the cartoon series. The film was popular with audiences but universally panned by critics. Gellar also appears in the movie's sequel.

The president of Gellar's own talent agency, David Wirtschafter , admitted that her movie career was floundering as of Fall 204, telling The New Yorker that the success of her low-budged film The Grudge"takes our client Sarah Michelle Gellar, who now is nothing at all, and it makes her a star, potentially. Suddenly, the Sarah Michelle Gellar space is meaningful." Whether this film, a 2004 remake of the Japanese horror film Ju-on, has raised her industry status remains to be seen.

Her next film project will be Southland Tales, a film by Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly. [1]

On September 1, 2002, Gellar and teen-movie actor Freddie Prinze Jr. were married in Mexico.

During the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Once More, With Feeling", which spawned an original cast album, Gellar sang on several of the songs: "Going Through the Motions", "I've Got a Theory", "Walk Through the Fire", "Something to Sing About", and "Where Do We Go From Here?".

Filmography

• Southland Tales (2005) (Pre-Production)... Candy
• Revolver (2005) (Filming)... Joanna Mills
• Romantic Comedy (2005) (pre-production)... Kate Willous
• The Grudge (October 22, 2004) (in theaters)... Karen
• Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004)... Daphne Blake
• Happily N'Ever After (2004)... (voice) Cinderella
• Scooby-Doo (movie) (2002)... Daphne Blake
• Harvard Man (2001)... Cindy Bandolini
• The It Girl (2001)...Susan
• Cruel Intentions (1999)... Kathryn Merteuil
• Simply Irresistible (1999)... Amanda Shelton
• She's All That (1999)... (uncredited) Girl in Cafeteria
• (1998)...Hylus
• Small Soldiers (1998)... (voice) Gwendy Doll
• Scream 2 (1997)... Casey "Cici" Cooper
• I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)... Helen Shivers
• High Stakes (1989)... (as Sarah Gellar) Karen Rose
• Funny Farm (1988)... (uncredited) Elizabeth's student
• Over the Brooklyn Bridge (1984)... (uncredited) Phil's daughter
• An Invasion of Privacy (1983)

Television

• Hercules (1998)... (voice) Andromeda
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)
• Beverly Hills Family Robinson (1997)... Jane Robinson
• All About Erica (1994)... (archive footage) Kendall Hart
• All My Children (1993-1995)... Kendall Hart #1
• Swan's Crossing (1992)... Sydney Orion Rutledge
• A Woman Named Jackie (1991)... teenage Jacqueline Bouvier
• Girl Talk (1989)
• Spenser: For Hire, episode: "Company Man" (#3.17) (1988)... Emily
• The Guiding Light (1986)... Flower Girl at Kurt and Mindy's Wedding
• An Invasion of Privacy (1983)... Jennifer Bianchi

External links

• Gellar's interview with Detour magazine, hosted on a fansite