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Sarah Michelle Gellar (born April 14,
1977) is a Golden Globe-nominated, Daytime Emmy
Award-winning American actress. She is probably best
known as Buffy Summers in the acclaimed television
series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
She has since become known as a film actress, having
starred in the family film Scooby-Doo (2002), the
independent film Harvard Man (2001), the teen drama
Cruel Intentions (1999) and the horror films The Return
(2006), The Grudge 2 (2006), The Grudge (2004), I Know
What You Did Last Summer (1997) and Scream 2 (1997). She
also provided the voice of April O'Neil in the film
TMNT.
Early life: Gellar was born in New York City, the
only child of Rosellen Greenfield, a nursery school
teacher, and Arthur Gellar. Both of her parents were
Jewish, though Gellar's family had a Christmas tree
during the holidays while she was growing up. In 1984,
her parents divorced and she was brought up by her
mother on the Upper East Side.
Gellar was estranged from her father from this time
until his death from liver cancer on October 9, 2001.
She attended New York's Columbia Grammar &
Preparatory School and the Professional Children's
School. Gellar held a straight-A average and became a
competent figure skater. Her best friend was Melissa
Joan Hart, who later was the star of the series Sabrina,
the Teenage Witch.
Television career: At the age of four, Gellar was
spotted by an agent in a restaurant in Uptown Manhattan.
Two weeks later, she auditioned for a part in An
Invasion Of Privacy, a made-for-television film starring
Valerie Harper, Carol Kane and Jeff Daniels. At the
audition, Gellar read both her own lines and those of
Harper's, impressing the directors enough to cast her in
the role. A short while later, she got a part in a
controversial television commercial for Burger King, in
which she criticized McDonald's and claimed to eat only
at Burger King.
This led to a lawsuit against Burger King, ad agency J.
Walter Thompson, and Gellar herself, who appeared in
court as a witness for the defense. The dispute was
eventually settled out of court. Gellar continued to
make commercials while appearing in acting roles,
including playing Emily in an episode of the TV series
Spenser: For Hire, appearing in a minor role in the
Chevy Chase starring comedy Funny Farm and in the movie
High Stakes, and filming in Europe for the TV series
Crossbow. In 1991, she played a young Jacqueline Bouvier
in A Woman Named Jackie.
Gellar got her first major break in 1992, when she
starred in the serial Swan's Crossing and was
subsequently cast in the soap opera All My Children,
playing Kendall Hart, the long-lost daughter of
character Erica Kane (Susan Lucci). In 1995, at the age
of eighteen, she won a Daytime Emmy Award for
Outstanding Younger Leading Actress in a Drama Series
for the role. It is on the set of this Soap opera that
she met Michelle Trachtenberg who would later join the
Buffy the Vampire Slayer cast.
Gellar left All My Children in 1995 amid rumors of a
strained working relationship with Lucci, and landed the
lead in the 1997 TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
playing a teenager burdened with the responsibility of
fighting a number of mystical foes. The show was well
received by critics and audiences alike, spawning a
spinoff series (Angel). Throughout its seven seasons and
a total of 144 episodes, Buffy, and Gellar along with
her, became cult icons in the United States, the UK and
Australia , particularly as archetypes of
"empowered" women. Gellar also sang several of
the songs during the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical
episode "Once More, with Feeling", which
spawned an original cast album.
During the show's later years, Gellar expressed
dissatisfaction about certain aspects of the show.
Shortly after the show's end, Gellar stated that she had
no interest in appearing in a Buffy feature film,
although since then she has said she will consider it if
the script is good enough. She did not appear in the
final season of Angel, causing the intended episode
("You're Welcome") to be rewritten for the
character of Cordelia Chase. Gellar has said that she
was willing to appear in the episode, but scheduling
conflicts and family problems prevented it. Gellar has
declined to lend her voice to the various Buffy video
games, and another actress voiced Buffy for an animated
series based on the show, which never aired.
Gellar has appeared on the covers of Cosmopolitan,
Glamour, FHM, Rolling Stone, and other magazines. She
was featured in Maxim magazine's "Hot 100"
list in 2002, 2003, and 2005, and in FHM 's "100
Sexiest Women" of 2005. She was voted number 1 in
the magazine's 1999 edition. In 1998, she was named one
of People's "50 Most Beautiful People (in the
World)". Gellar has also appeared in "Got
Milk?" ads as well as in the Stone Temple Pilots
music video "Sour Girl", and was a celebrity
spokesperson for Maybelline.
Film career: Gellar attempted to capitalize on
her television fame for a motion pictures career, with
intermittent commercial success. After roles in the
popular thrillers I Know What You Did Last Summer and
Scream 2 (both 1997), she starred in the 1999 films
Simply Irresistible, a romantic comedy, and Cruel
Intentions, a modern-day retelling of Les Liaisons
Dangereuses.
Cruel Intentions, with a kiss between
Gellar and co-star Selma Blair that won the two the
"Best Kiss" award at the 2000 MTV Movie
Awards, was a modest hit at the box office, grossing
over $38 million in the U.S. Critic Roger Ebert stated
that Gellar and co-star Ryan Phillippe "develop a
convincing emotional charge" and that Gellar is
"effective as a bright girl who knows exactly how
to use her act as a tramp".
Gellar next played a lead role in James Toback's
critically unsuccessful Harvard Man (2001) and starred
as Daphne Blake in Scooby-Doo (2002), a live-action
adaptation of the cartoon series. Gellar also appeared
in the sequel, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004),
which grossed less than the first film. Gellar's next
film was the 2004 horror film The Grudge, which was a
success at the box office.
David Wirtschafter, the president of the
William Morris Agency (which represented Gellar),
subsequently told The New Yorker that the success of The
Grudge "takes our client Sarah Michelle Gellar, who
now is nothing at all, and...makes her a star,
potentially. Suddenly, the Sarah Michelle Gellar space
is meaningful". The remark led Gellar to terminate
her association with the agency.
Gellar appeared in the sequel The Grudge 2, which opened
on October 13, 2006; in the film, she has a minor role
reprising her character from the first film. Gellar next
appeared in the thriller The Return, which was released
on November 10, 2006. She then lent her voice to two
animated films: the animated fairy tale Happily N'Ever
After, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The latter film
was released by Warner Bros. and The Weinstein Company,
and made over $25 million on its opening weekend. She
has also starred in several films that have yet to be
released, including Southland Tales, The Air I Breathe,
Suburban Girl, and Addicted (a supernatural thriller
based on the South Korean film Jungdok.).
So far Addicted is the only movie with a
known release date (October 12th) though The Air I
Breathe and Suburban Girl have been seen by members of
the public at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival . Southland
Tales opened at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2006 and
is set to release in the US in March 2008. Her next
film, Alice, is in the pre-production stage.
Personal life: Gellar met future husband Freddie
Prinze Jr. during filming of the 1997 teen horror film I
Know What You Did Last Summer but the two did not begin
dating until 2000. They were engaged in April 2001 and
married in Mexico on September 1, 2002 in a ceremony
officiated by Adam Shankman, a film director and
choreographer with whom Gellar had worked on Buffy the
Vampire Slayer.
In 2004, while filming The Grudge in Japan, Gellar
visited the famous Japanese swordsmith Shoji Yoshihara
(Kuniie III) and bought a Katana from him as a birthday
present for her husband. Gellar realized that she needed
clearance from the government to remove the sword from
the country, and after eventually succeeding, stated
that it was "incredibly difficult" to do.
Gellar has said in interviews that she believes in God
but does not belong to an organized religion. Gellar has
said in interviews that she collects rare editions of
classic children's literature. |
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