Sarah Michelle Gellar

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Sarah Michelle Gellar (aka Sarah Michelle Prinze) (born April 4, 1977) is an American actor best known for her role as Buffy on the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV Series). She has also had leading roles in the films The Grudge, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Cruel Intentions and the live action version of Scooby Doo.

1 Life and Career
2 Filmography
3 External Link

Life and Career

Gellar was born in New York to Arthur and Rosellen Gellar. She has been acting since childhood and her first role was at age four in the TV movie Invasion of Privacy. Her next role came in a Burger King ad in which she claimed never to eat McDonalds. This statement caused much controversy and McDonald's sued the ad agency responsible. The matter was settled out of court. Sarah continued to act in ads and film and won a role as Burt Young's daughter in Over the Brooklyn Bridge.

Sarah's parents divorced when she was eight and she became estranged from her father. Their relationship never mended and he died of cancer in 1988. Sarah summed up her relationship with her father in an interview: "Just because you donate sperm does not make you a father. I would never give him the credit or acknowledge him as my father".

Sarah acted throughout her childhood taking on roles in the Funny Farm, TV Series Spenser for Hire, and Crossbow. She attended the Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School in New York before switching to the Professional Children's School also attended by fellow actors Tara Reid, Macaulay Culkin, and Jerry O’Connell, who she dated briefly in 1988. Sarah did well in school, maintaining an A-average and enjoying her extra-curricular activities which included figure skating. She became a competitive figure skater.

Her first significant acting role was in the soap opera Swan's Crossing followed by her Daytime Emmy Award-winning role as Kendall Hart on the soap opera All My Children. Gellar's role on All My Children ended in 1995 and she took on the lead role in the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The show's creator Joss Whedon originally wanted Sarah for the role of Cordelia Chase but it was not what she had in mind. After years of playing a scheming villain Kendall, she wanted something different. Sarah accepted the role as Cordelia but when an actress for the part of Buffy couldn't be found, she auditioned again, competing against actresses Selma Blair, Charisma Carpenter, and Katie Holmes. She won the part and went on to play Buffy for the show's eight seasons. She also guest-starred on the show's spinoff series, Angel.

Buffy was a career success for Sarah and during the series' run she starred in the movies I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream 2, Simply Irresistible, and Cruel Intentions. In 1998 she was named one of People Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful and made Maxim's Hot 100 list in 2002, 2003, and 2005.

In 1999 she dated tennis player Jan-Michael Gambill and that summer built houses with Habitat for Humanity in the Dominican Republic. In 2000 she began dating fellow actor Freddie Prinze Jr. She also took on a role in the unsuccessful film Harvard Man followed by the much more successful Scooby Doo. She also starred in the film's less successful sequel Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. In both films her fiancé Prinze co-starred. Gellar and Prinze married in 2002 in Jalisco, Mexico.

Gellar announced plans to leave Buffy the Vampire Slayer after the show's eighth season and the series came to an end in 2003. Gellar then devoted herself to acting in films. She starred in the hit film The Grudge and had a cameo in its sequel, "The Grudge 2." She also lent her voice to Happily N'Ever After released in 2007 and TMNT, a live action adaptation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

In 2006, Gellar completed a role in "Southland Tales," Richard Kelly's apocalyptic movie and follow-up to "Donnie Darko." It also stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Seann William Scott. Gellar played Krysta Now/Krysta Kapowski, a porn actress and aspiring entertainment entrepreneur, in the offbeat film. In 2007, she appeared in another off beat film The Air I Breathe in which she portrayed the emotion sorrow.

Other notable films include a darker take on Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Alice in which Gellar plays the title role. The film makes its debut in July, 2008. In 2008 , she also appears in Possession as the wife of a man whose brother awakens from a coma believing he is his brother. Gellar also begins work on Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey, to which she'll lend her voice to the character Ranger alongside John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson and Lacey Chabert.