&bull Biography

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 Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.

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 defence. 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 got her first major break in 1992, when she starred in the serial Swans Crossing and was subsequently cast in the soap opera All My Children, playing 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 would later join the Buffy the Vampire Slayer cast.

Gellar left All My Children in 1995 amid rumours of a strained working relationship with 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. The show was well received by critics and audiences alike, spawning a spin-off 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, the UK and Australia , 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.

During the show’s later years, Gellar expressed dissatisfaction about certain aspects of the show. 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. 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. Gellar has said that she was willing to appear in the episode, but scheduling conflicts and family problems prevented it.

It was reported on September 25, 2008 that Gellar would return to television in the HBO series The Wonderful Maladys. The show is about three dysfunctional adult siblings living in New York and struggling to deal with the loss of their parents years ago. Creator Charles Randolph told Variety that he wrote the part with Gellar in mind, and described Gellar’s character as having “a kind of zealous immaturity – like a drug addict with a to-do list.” HBO plans to shoot the pilot (using a single camera) in early 2009. Gellar and Randolph will serve as executive producers.

Film Career

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 , 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 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”.

Gellar next played a lead role in James Toback’s critically unsuccessful Harvard Man (2001) and starred as Daphne Blake in 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. She starred alongside her husband, Freddie Prinze, Jr. in both Scooby-Doo movies. 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 next appeared in the thriller The Return, which was released on November 10, 2006. She then lent her voice to two animated films: the animated fairy tale Happily N’Ever After, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. She has also starred in several films that have yet to be released, including Southland Tales, The Air I Breathe, Suburban Girl, and Addicted. The Air I Breathe and Suburban Girl have been seen by members of the public at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival but have no release date set at this time . Addicted has had a number of different release dates set ranging from September 2007 to February 2008 . Southland Tales opened at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2006 and is set to release in the US on November 9th 2007.

The film Possession, starring Gellar, has had a range of release dates – starting with February 2008. The film was finally set to be released in theatres in January of 2009, but due to financial problems at YARI Film Group, the release was yet again pushed forward. In March 2009 it was announced that the film would skip theatrical release altogether, and go straight to DVD/Blu-Ray. It is now set to be thus released on May 12, 2009.

Gellar will also star in Veronika Decides to Die. The film tells the story of a young woman suffering from severe depression who rediscovers the joy in life when she finds out that she only has days to live following a suicide attempt. Filming of the movie began on May 12, 2008, in New York City and finished in late June.

Personal Life

Gellar met future husband Freddie Prinze Jr. during filming of the 1997 teen horror film I Know What You Did Last Summer 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. 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.

Gellar has said in interviews that she believes in God but does not belong to an organized religion. Gellar has said in interviews that she collects rare editions of classic children’s literature.

Gellar has four tattoos. She has a symbol for integrity on her lower back, a heart and dagger and a cherry blossom on her ankle, and two dragonflies on her back.

Gellar is also an active advocate for various charities, including breast cancer research, Project Angel Food, Habitat for Humanity and CARE, a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty, all of which she says you get to “physically do something”. She says, “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 the show because there wasn’t time. And now that I have the time, it’s amazing.”

Gellar has revealed that she suffers from a phobia of being buried alive. She has said “I really fear graveyards and I have a big phobia of being buried alive. It was really hard being an ass-kicking vampire slayer when you are afraid of graves.”

Sarah and Freddie welcomed their first child – a daughter named Charolette Grace Prinze – on Saturday, September 19, 2009 in Los Angeles, California.

Thanks to Wikipedia.