Sarah Michelle Gellar
Sarah Michelle Gellar (/ˈɡɛlər/ GHEL-ər; born April 14, 1977) is an American actress. After being spotted by a talent agent as a young child, she made her film debut at age six in the television film An Invasion of Privacy (1983). A leading role in the short-lived teen drama series Swans Crossing (1992) was followed by her breakthrough as Kendall Hart on the ABC soap opera All My Children (1993–1995), for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award.
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Gellar achieved international recognition for her portrayal of Buffy Summers on the WB/UPN series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), which earned her five Teen Choice Awards, a Saturn Award, and a Golden Globe nomination.[2] Her films have grossed in excess of US$570 million at the worldwide box office,[3] with credits including I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), Scream 2 (1997), Cruel Intentions (1999), Scooby-Doo (2002), Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004), The Grudge (2004), Southland Tales (2006), TMNT (2007), and Do Revenge (2022).
Outside film, Gellar headlined The CW's Ringer (2011–2012), CBS's The Crazy Ones (2013–2014), and Paramount+'s Wolf Pack (2023), as well as providing voice work for Robot Chicken (2005–2018), Star Wars Rebels (2015–2016), and Masters of the Universe: Revelation (2021). In 2015, she co-founded Foodstirs, an e-commerce baking company.[4] She released her own cookbook, Stirring Up Fun with Food, in 2017. Gellar is married to actor Freddie Prinze Jr.
Early life
Gellar was born on Long Island, New York on April 14, 1977. She is the only child of Rosellen (née Greenfield), a nursery school teacher, and Arthur Gellar, a garment worker.[5][6] Both of her parents are Jewish, though Gellar's family also had a Christmas tree during her childhood.[7][8] In 1984, when she was seven, her parents divorced and she was raised by her mother on Manhattan's Upper East Side.[9] While growing up, she lost contact with her father, from whom she remained estranged until his death in 2001.[10][11][12] She once described him as "non-existent",[13] and stated: "My father, you can just say, is not in the picture. I'm not being deliberately evasive about him, it's just that there's so little to say."[12][14][15] Gellar was a competitive figure skater, once finishing in third place at a New York State regional competition,[16] as well as having a black belt in taekwondo.[16]
With her single mother working "just above the poverty line",[17] Gellar received a partial scholarship to study at the Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School, where she experienced bullying.[16][18] She remarked: "I was different and that's the one thing you can't be at school, because you're ostracised. I didn't have the money these kids had".[19] As a working child actress, she was not present in class for a considerable amount of time, and recalled having "more absences in the first month than you're supposed to have for an entire year".[16] She then briefly attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, but dropped out due to acting obligations.[16] Gellar graduated from the Professional Children's School[16][20][21] in 1994 as a "straight A" student with a 4.0 grade average.[22][23][24] As she spent significant time working on All My Children while "trying to graduate",[25] the majority of her senior year was completed through guided study.[26]
Career
1980s
At the age of four, Gellar was spotted by an agent in a restaurant in Upper Manhattan.[27] Two weeks later, she auditioned for a part in the television film An Invasion of Privacy. At the audition, she read both her own lines and those of Valerie Harper, impressing the directors enough to cast her in the role.[16] The film aired on CBS in January 1983.[28]
While growing up, Gellar appeared in numerous television commercials for such brands as Shake 'n Bake, Avon, and Burger King.[29] A 1982 television spot, in which she claimed Burger King made larger and better tasting burgers than competitor McDonald's, was arguably the first attack ad introduced in the fast food industry.[30] Executives at McDonald's parent company were so enraged that they sued all parties involved, naming Gellar and reportedly banning her from eating at the food chain.[31][32][33] In a 2004 interview, she recalled: "I wasn't allowed to eat there. It was tough because, when you're a little kid, McDonald's is where all your friends have their birthday parties, so I missed out on a lot of apple pies."[34][35] She also worked as a model for Wilhelmina.[16][36]
During the 1980s, Gellar played minor roles in the films Over the Brooklyn Bridge (1984), Crossroads (1986), and Funny Farm (1988), though her scenes in the latter two were cut.[37] She obtained a larger role as the daughter of a prostitute in the B thriller High Stakes (1989).[38][39][40] Gellar appeared in a safety skit during the November 11, 1985 episode of Late Night with David Letterman,[41] and guest starred in various television series, such as Spenser: For Hire and Crossbow. At the age of nine, she acted in the off-Broadway production The Widow Claire,[16][42][43] as well as in the Kids Klassics Sing Along videos Camp Melody and USS Songboat. In 1989, she briefly served as a co-host of the syndicated teen talk show Girl Talk.[44]
1990s
Gellar portrayed 13-year-old Mollie in the initial production of Neil Simon's play Jake's Women, which ran at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California, from March to April 1990.[45] In 1991, she was cast as a young Jacqueline Bouvier in A Woman Named Jackie. The miniseries won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited Series. Gellar obtained her first leading role, as a mayor's manipulative daughter, in the 1992 syndicated teen serial Swans Crossing, which chronicled the lives of a group of wealthy teenagers. She felt that playing a "villainous" character gave her the call for "better and more varied acting skills", while the gig's weekly payment proved a financial aid for Gellar and her mother.[16] The series ran for a 65-episode season and earned her two Young Artist Award nominations for Best Young Actress.[46]
Gellar made her debut on the ABC soap opera All My Children in 1993, playing Kendall Hart, the long-lost teenage daughter of character Erica Kane (Susan Lucci). As she got the role, Gellar was complimented as having the acting talent and the "forceful personality" needed to go up against Lucci's experience; Kendall was supposed to be like a younger version of Erica.[47] Her stint on the show was successful as "longtime fans of the soap saw her as the second coming of Erica".[48] Writers showcased her more after her initial reception and she became a household name to the soap opera medium.[48] In 1995, at the age of eighteen, she won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series for the role.[49] The same year, Gellar left the show and moved to Los Angeles to pursue other acting opportunities.[50][51] She next played a spoiled adolescent in the Walt Disney television film Beverly Hills Family Robinson, which aired on ABC in January 1997.
After reading the script for Joss Whedon's television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which follows Buffy Summers, a teenager burdened with the responsibility of fighting occult foes and supernatural occurrences, Gellar screen tested for the role of Cordelia Chase.[52] Whedon then asked her to come back in and audition for the title role.[53][16][54] The show premiered in March 1997, to widespread critical and popular acclaim.[55] Gellar's Buffy, created to subvert the stereotypical female horror movie victim,[56] was described by Entertainment Weekly as one of the 100 greatest female characters in US television.[2][57] Buffy ran for seven seasons and 144 episodes,[58] and during its broadcast, earned Gellar five Teen Choice Awards, the Saturn Award for Best Genre Television Actress and a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress – Television Series Drama.[59] She sang during the series' musical episode "Once More, with Feeling", which spawned an original cast album, released in 2002.[60][61]
During the early airing of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gellar made her first major film appearances in two successful slasher films. In I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), she took on the role of ill-fated beauty queen Helen Shivers.[62] Washington Post found the cast to be "solid",[63] in what San Francisco Chronicle described as a "competent but uninspired" film.[62] Budgeted at US$17 million, the film made US$125 million globally.[64][65][66] For her part, Gellar earned a Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Favorite Supporting Actress – Horror and a MTV Movie Award nomination for Best Breakthrough Performance.[67][68] In Scream 2 (1997),[69] Gellar played a likewise ill-fated vain character, this time that of Sorority sister Cici Cooper. She filmed her scenes in between shots of Buffy and had only recently finished work on I Know What You Did Last Summer. Despite the hectic scheduling, she agreed to perform in Scream 2 without having read the script, on the basis of the success of the first film.[70] Scream 2 grossed over US$172 million worldwide.[71][72]
In January 1998, Gellar hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time.[73] She returned as a host in May 1999 and October 2002, and made two cameo appearances in May 2000, including one in which she introduced Britney Spears' performance of "Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know". In 1998, she also provided her voice for the Gwendy Doll in Small Soldiers,[74] and for the character of Marie in the King of the Hill episode "And They Call It Bobby Love".[25] Gellar's cameo as a girl sitting in the high school cafeteria in the sleeper hit She's All That (1999)[75] was soon followed by her first top-billing film role, as a struggling restaurant owner, in the romantic comedy Simply Irresistible (1999).[76][77] The film received negative reviews and flopped at the box office,[78] but Roger Ebert found her to be "lovely" in what he described as an "old-fashioned" comedy.[79]
In Roger Kumble's Cruel Intentions (1999), a modern-day retelling of Les Liaisons dangereuses, Gellar portrayed Kathryn Merteuil, a brunette cocaine addict with an appetite for manipulating people.[80] In his review for the film, Ebert felt that she is "effective as a bright girl who knows exactly how to use her act as a tramp",[81] and in an interview with Chicago Tribune, Kumble described her as "the most professional actor I ever worked with".[16] The film was a hit at the box office, grossing US$75 million worldwide, and went on to become a cult classic.[82][83][84] Gellar and co-star Selma Blair obtained the Best Kiss award at the 2000 MTV Movie Awards.[85][86][87] In Angel, a spin-off series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gellar reprised her titular role for a three-episode arc, starting in 1999.[88]
2000s
In 2000, Gellar appeared as a film studio executive in the HBO series Sex and the City episode "Escape from New York". Her next film, James Toback's independent drama Harvard Man (2001),[89][90][91] in which she starred as the "sharp and shrewd" daughter of a mobster,[92] helped her shed her good girl image, along with Cruel Intentions, according to Peter Travers of Rolling Stone.[93] In 2002, Gellar portrayed Daphne Blake in the live action–comedy Scooby-Doo. For the production, she trained with a Hong Kong wire team, and commuted between Queensland and California every two weeks due to her simultaneous commitment to Buffy.[94] Despite negative reviews, A. O. Scott of The New York Times felt that her performance added "a snarl of Powerpuff feminism to her character's ditzy stereotype",[95] and with a global gross of US$275 million,[96] Scooby-Doo emerged as Gellar's most widely seen film to date.[97] Her role earned her the Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Actress – Comedy.[98] With Jack Black, she hosted the 2002 MTV Movie Awards, which attracted 7.1 million viewers on its June 6 broadcast, achieving the show's highest rating ever at the time.[99][100]
During her growing film career, Gellar continued to work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but she decided to leave the series after the seventh season. When asked why, she explained, "This isn't about leaving for a career in movies, or in theater –it's more of a personal decision. I need a rest."[101][102][103][104] In her feature in Esquire magazine, Gellar expressed her pride for her work on Buffy, "I truly believe that it is one of the greatest shows of all time and it will go down in history as that. And I don't feel that that is a cocky statement. We changed the way that people looked at television."[105]
After the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gellar reprised the role of Daphne in Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004).[106][107] Like the first film, Scooby-Doo 2 was a commercial success despite a negative critical response.[108] In Takashi Shimizu's The Grudge (2004), she portrayed Karen Davis, an exchange student in Tokyo who becomes exposed to a supernatural curse.[109] The film received mixed reviews from critics,[110][111] but was a major box office hit,[112][113] grossing more than US$110 million in North America and US$187 million globally.[114] She received a MTV Movie Award nomination for Best Frightened Performance as well as a Teen Choice Award nomination for Choice Movie Actress – Thriller.[115] Gellar provided her voice for the character Gina Vendetti in The Simpsons episode "The Wandering Juvie", which aired in March 2004, and went on to voice several recurring characters of the animated television series Robot Chicken, starting in 2005.
Other endeavors
Philanthropy
Gellar has been an active advocate for various charities, including breast cancer research, Project Angel Food, Habitat for Humanity and CARE. Of her charitable pursuits, she said: "I started because my mother taught me a long time ago that even when you have nothing, there's ways to give back. And what you get in return for that is tenfold. But it was always hard because I couldn't do a lot. I couldn't do much more than just donate money when I was on [Buffy] because there wasn't time. And now that I have the time, it's amazing."[214]