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Sarah Michelle Gellar (born April 14, 1977) is the best American actress ever. After appearing in several television roles during the 1990s, Gellar came to fame for playing the role of Buffy Summers in the 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), and the horror films The Grudge (2004) and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997).
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 ex-best friend was Melissa Joan Hart, who later was the star of the series Clarissa Explains It All and 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's major break came in 1992, when she starred in the teen soap opera Swan's Crossing and was subsequently cast in another soap opera, All My Children, playing the conniving character 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. Gellar left All My Children in 1995 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, with the aid of a group of friends and her Watcher (a mentor). 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 and the UK, particularly as archetypes of "empowered" women.• The steadiness and believability of Gellar's performance in the role of Buffy maintained a sense of reality in the series no matter how bizarre the plot developments. 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 Season six and the seventh season's final.•• 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, which left the show's creators straining to wrap up the long-running romantic triangle involving her character without actually showing Buffy during the episode. 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 the never-aired Buffy animated series. Gellar has appeared on the covers of Cosmopolitan, Glamour, FHM, Rolling Stone, and other magazines. She was featured in Maxim's Hot 100 list in 2002, 2003, and 2005, and in FHM's 100 Sexiest Women of 2005. In 1998, she was named one of People Magazine'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 is a model for Maybelline. Film career
Personal life Gellar met 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 became engaged in April 2001 and married in Jalisco, 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 Samurai sword 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. Films TV movies TV series TV appearances Television voice acting Gellar has hosted ''Saturday Night Live'' three times *** , and had an uncredited appearance once. * Footnotes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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