Sarah Michelle Gellar

SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR

Date of Birth: April 14, 1977

A natural-born ham, Sarah Michelle Gellar was spotted by an agent while dining at a restaurant with her mother at the tender age of four. The only child raised by a divorced schoolteacher mother landed her first able role in the 1983 TV movie An Invasion of Privacy within weeks. That was followed by some 100 commercials, including one for Burger King in which she chided McDonalds for serving such skimpy patties. The commercial resulted in a now-famous disparagement lawsuit against her employers, but lucky for her, her involvement didn't break her short stride. Larger roles in the features Over the Brooklyn Bridge (1984), Funny Farm (1988), and High Stakes (1989); in the TV series Spenser: For Hire (1986); and in a Circle in the Square production of Horton Foote's The Widow Claire honed her thespian's skills. She attended New York's famous Professional Children's High School and also managed somehow to find time to excel as a competitive figure skater.

More TV and theater followed but it was 1993 that delivered her first solid adult role, that of Erica Kane's long-lost, bad-seed daughter, Kendall Hart, on the daytime drama All My Children. Playing the scheming offspring of soap operadom's most notorious schemer came with a reward: an Emmy for Outstanding Younger Actress in 1994. Gellar left the soap in 1995 and headed to California.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a mid-season replacement based on the 1992 feature of the same title and in 1996, Gellar (who actually has a brown belt in Tae Kwon Do) was chosen to play the title role of the action-packed splatter series. As a not-so-typical teen, Buffy is a "slayer" by night with supernatural powers who rids the world of any undead nasties, but by day, Buffy endures the typical teen traumas.

The show reigned as the highest-ranking offering from the WB in its second season, and achieved cult-favorite status in a surprisingly short span of time. The show's popularity afforded the benefit of expanding Gellar's big-screen options. She appeared in both of Kevin Williamson's 1997 teen thrillers: I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream 2. Simply Irresistible (1999) simply flopped but Cruel Intentions (also 1999), a trashy teen adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos' 1782 novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses, was a hit.

In 2002, she joined her then-boyfriend, Freddie Prinze Jr., in the campy live action version of the popular animated television series, Scooby Doo. The film was a huge hit at the box office, making over $150 million in the U.S. alone. Gellar won a Teen Choice Award as Choice Actress in a Film Comedy.

Prinze Jr. and Gellar were married in September 2002, and Gellar announced several months later that the current season on Buffy would be her last. She and Prinze Jr. both appeared in a Scooby sequel entitled Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004).

In September 2009, they welcomed their first child, Charlotte Grace Prinze, into their lives. The same year, Gellar changed her name to Sarah Michelle Prinze.

Filmography:

Happily N'Ever After (2007) (voice)
The Girls' Guide to Hunting & Fishing (2007)
The Air I Breathe (2006)
The Return (2006)
The Grudge 2 (2006)
Southland Tales (2006)
The Grudge (2004)
Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
Scooby-Doo (2002)
Harvard Man (2001)
Cruel Intentions (1999)
Simply Irresistible (1999)
She's All That (1999) (uncredited)
Small Soldiers (1998) (voice)
Scream 2 (1997)
I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)
High Stakes (1989)
Funny Farm (1988) (uncredited)
Over the Brooklyn Bridge (1984) (uncredited)