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 best friend was Melissa Joan Hart, who later was the star of the series Clarissa Explains It All and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.
Early Television career 1983-1992
Gellar, age five, playing 'Jennifer Bianchi' in An Invasion Of Privacy (1983)
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 serial Swan's Crossing.
Daytime Televison Career 1993-1995
In 1993 Gellar was subsequently cast in the 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. It is on the set of this Soap opera that she met Michelle Trachtenberg who will become later on the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer as her sister, Dawn Summers.Gellar left All My Children in 1995 amidst rumors of a strained working relationship with Susan Lucci.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer 1997-2003
She 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. 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.
Spike (James Marsters) and Gellar as Buffy in season six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
During the show's later years, Gellar expressed dissatisfaction about certain aspects of Season six and the seventh season's finale.[6][7] 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.[8] She did not appear in the final season of Angel, causing the intended episode ("You're Welcome") to be rewritten for the character of Cordelia Chase[9]. Gellar has said that she was willing to appear in the episode, but scheduling conflicts and family problems prevented it.[10] 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. She was voted number 1 in FHM's 1999 edition. 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.
Fim Career Development 1997-Present
Gellar portraying 'Daphne Blake' in Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004)
With continued success on Buffy, Gellar attempted to capitalize on her television fame for a motion pictures career, with intermittent commercial success. She stared in the popular thrillers I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream 2 (both 1997). Both of these films increased her popularity and were "Box Office Gold". She starred in the 1999 films Simply Irresistible, a romantic comedy, and Cruel Intentions, a modern-day retelling of Les Liaisons Dangereuses which is a novel from 18th century by Choderlos de Laclos. Cruel Intentions, with a 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".[11]Gellar next played a lead role in James Toback's critically unsuccessful Harvard Man (2001) and starred as Daphne in Scooby-Doo (2002), a live-action adaptation of the cartoon series, the film became a huge hit raking in over $275 million. Gellar also appeared in the sequel, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004), while not as lucrative, it earned over $178 million internationally. Gellar's next film was the 2004 horror film The Grudge, The film recieved mixed reviews, but it made over $110 million domestically.. 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.
Sarah Michelle Gellar, playing 'Karen' in The Grudge (2004)
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 next role was in the thriller The Return, which was released on November 10, 2006, both films were disappointments in theaters. Her most recent role was in the animated fairy tale film Happily N'Ever After, where she gave the voice of Princess Ella. She voiced the character April O'Neil in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles , her newest movie , released by Warner Bros. and The Weinstein Company. The film opened in at number one at the Box Office, and has earned over $50 million so far, exceeding it's 30+ million budget. Her upcoming films include Southland Tales, The Air I Breathe, Suburban Girl, Addicted (a supernatural thriller based on the South Korean film Jungdok.[12]) She's also in negotiations to play Renee Montoya,or be casted as Harley Quinn in Christopher Nolan The Dark Knight (film), and is rumored to reprise the role of Karen Davis in The Grudge 3
Personal life
Gellar met future husband Freddie Prinze Jr. during filming of the 1997 teen horror film I Know What You Did Last Summer[13] but the two did not begin dating until 2000. They were engaged in April 2001 and married in 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.[14] 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.[15]
Gellar has said in interviews that she believes in God but does not belong to an organized religion.
