Sarah Michelle Gellar

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Sarah Michelle Gellar
Sarah Michelle Gellar at the 2004 Dubai International Film Festival.
Birth name	Sarah Michelle Gellar
Born	April 14, 1977 (age 29) New York City, New York
Height	5' 3" (1.60 m)
Notable roles	Kendall, All My Children Buffy Summers, Buffy Karen Davis, The Grudge
Spouse(s)	Freddie Prinze Jr.

Sarah Michelle Gellar (born April 14, 1977) is an American actress. 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).

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 Television career 1.3 Film career 1.4 Personal life 2 Filmography 2.1 Films 2.2 TV movies 2.3 TV series 2.4 TV appearances 2.5 Television voice acting 3 Footnotes 4 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] 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.^[1] 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 Clarissa Explains It All and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.

[edit] 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 amidst rumors of a strained working relationship with Susan 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, 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.^[2] 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.^{[citation needed]} 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.^[3][4] 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.^[5] 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.^[6] 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 celebrity spokesperson for Maybelline.

[edit] Film career

With continued success on Buffy, 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 lesbian 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".^[7]

Gellar next played a lead role in James Toback's critically unsuccessful Harvard Man (2001) and starred as Daphne in the box office success 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 and co-star Freddie Prinze, Jr. have stated that they would not return for more films in the series and the studio has no plans to continue the franchise.^{[citation needed]} 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's most recent role was in the thriller The Return, which was released on November 10, 2006. She has also starred in several films that have yet to be released, including Southland Tales, The Air I Breathe and The Girls' Guide to Hunting And Fishing. Gellar will next star opposite Lee Pace in Addicted, a supernatural thriller based on the South Korean film Jungdok.^[8]

[edit] Personal life

Gellar met husband Freddie Prinze, Jr. during filming of the 1997 teen horror film I Know What You Did Last Summer^[9] 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 Katana from him as a birthday present for her husband.^[10] 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.^[11]

Gellar has said in interviews that she believes in God but does not belong to an organized religion.

[edit] Filmography

[edit] Films

Year	Film	Role	Status / Notes
2007	Addicted		Filming
	Alice	Alice	Pre-production (see also American McGee's Alice)
	The Girls' Guide to Hunting And Fishing	Brett Eisenberg	Post-production Name may be now changed to Suburban Girl
	Happily N'Ever After	Cinderella	Animation ; Complete
	The Air I Breathe	Sorrow	Post-production
	Southland Tales	Krysta Now	Complete
2006	The Return	Joanna Mills
	The Grudge 2	Karen Davis
2004	The Grudge	Karen Davis
	Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed	Daphne Blake
2002	Scooby-Doo	Daphne Blake
2001	Harvard Man	Cindy Bandolini
1999	Cruel Intentions	Kathryn Merteuil
	Simply Irresistible	Amanda Shelton
	She's All That	Girl in Cafeteria	Bit part; uncredited
1998	Small Soldiers	Gwendy Doll	Voice
1997	Scream 2	Casey "Cici" Cooper
	I Know What You Did Last Summer	Helen Shivers
1989	High Stakes	Karen Rose	Credited as "Sarah Gellar"
1988	Funny Farm	Elizabeth's student	Bit part; uncredited
1984	Over the Brooklyn Bridge	Phil's daughter	Bit part; uncredited

[edit] TV movies

Year	Film	Role	Status / Other notes
1998	Beverly Hills Family Robinson	Jane Robinson	Filmed In 1996
1991	A Woman Named Jackie	Teenage Jacqueline Bouvier
1983	An Invasion Of Privacy	Jennifer Bianchi

[edit] TV series

Year	Show	Role	Status / Other notes
1997-2003	Buffy The Vampire Slayer	Buffy Summers, Buffybot, Faith on episode This Year's Girl (Buffy episode)
1993-1995	All My Children	Kendall Hart
1992	Swan's Crossing	Sidney Orion Rutledge

[edit] TV appearances

Year	Show	Role	Status / Other notes
2001	Grosse Pointe	Sarah Michelle Gellar	Ep. # 1.16
2000	Angel	Buffy Summers	Ep. # 1.19
	Sex And The City	Debbie	Ep. # 3.13
1999	Angel	Buffy Summers	Ep. # 1.8
1988	Crossbow	Sara Guidotti	Ep. # 2.13
	Spenser : For Hire	Emily	Ep. # 3.17
1981	Love, Sidney	Gail Hunnicutt
1980	Guiding Light	Flower Girl at Kurt & Mindy's Wedding

[edit] Television voice acting

Year	Show	Role	Status / Other notes
2006	Robot Chicken	Different Voices	Ep. # 2.06
2005	Robot Chicken	Different Voices	Ep. # 1.20
	Robot Chicken	Different Voices	Ep. # 1.17
	Robot Chicken	Different Voices	Ep. # 1.14
	Robot Chicken	Different Voices	Ep. # 1.04
	Robot Chicken	Different Voices	Ep. # 1.02
2004	The Simpsons	Gina Vendetti	Ep. # 15.16
2000	God, The Devil And Bob	That Actress On That Show	Ep. # 1.10
1998	Hercules	Andromeda	Ep. # 1.30
	King Of The Hill	Marie	Ep. # 3.02

Gellar has hosted Saturday Night Live three times [1][2][3] , and had an uncredited appearance once. [4]

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] External links

• Sarah Michelle Gellar at the Internet Movie Database
• Sarah Michelle Gellar at Yahoo! Movies
• Interview with Sarah Michelle Gellar for The Grudge at Dread Central

Persondata
NAME	Gellar, Sarah Michelle
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	American actress
DATE OF BIRTH	April 14, 1977
PLACE OF BIRTH	New York City, New York, United States
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH