Sarah Michelle Gellar

Sarah Michelle Gellar Prinze(/ˈɡɛlər/) (New York, April 14, 1977) is an American actress, producer, and entrepreneur. After being discovered at the age of four in New York City, she made her acting debut in the television movie An Invasion of Privacy (1983). After a role in the teen drama series Swans Crossing (1992), his television breakthrough came in 1993, when he played Kendall Hart on the ABC daytime soap opera, All My Children, for which she won the 1995 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series.

She received international recognition for her portrayal of Buffy Summers on the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for which she won six Teen Choice Awards and the Saturn Award for Best Genre Television Actress and received a Golden Globe Award nomination. Her most successful films at the box office include I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997, where she also met her husband, fellow actor Freddie Prinze, Jr..), Scream 2 (1997), Cruel Intentions (1999), Scooby-Doo (2002) and Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004) as Daphne Blake, the American adaptation of the Japanese films The Grudge (2004) and The Return (2006). Subsequently, he had leading roles in mostly independent films, such as Southland Tales (2007), Suburban Girl (2007), TMNT (2007), The Air I Breathe (2008), Possession (2009) and Veronika Decides to Die (2009). Gellar went on to headline The CW's short-lived drama-thriller series Ringer (2011-2012) and the CBS comedy series The Crazy Ones (2013-2014).).

In 2015, he founded Foodstirs together with Galit Laibow and Greg Fleishman. It was an e-commerce startup that sells baking kits, and in 2017, she released her own cookbook, Stirring Up Fun with Food.

Early Years

She was born on Long Island, New York, to a family of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. She is the only child of Rosellen (née Greenfield), a kindergarten teacher, and Arthur Gellar, a garment worker. Both of her parents are Jewish, although Gellar's family also had a Christmas tree during her childhood. In 1984, when she was seven years old, her parents divorced, and she was raised by her mother on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. While growing up with her mother, she lost contact with her father, from whom she remained estranged until his death in 2001; He once described it as "non-existent", and in the early 2000s, he said: "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 very little to say.' In addition to being a working girl at the time, Gellar was a competitive figure skater, once finishing third in a regional competition from the state of New York, as well as having a black belt in taekwondo.

Gellar received a partial scholarship to study at Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School, as her mother could not afford the full tuition, so she was constantly bullied. She said in an interview with The Independent: "I was different and that's the only thing you can't be at school, because you're ostracized. He didn't have the money that the other kids had. Gellar was absent from class most of the time at school, as he had to work on several acting projects simultaneously, recalling that he "had more absences." the first month of the ones you're supposed to have all year long. she told them that she had back problems and that she had to go to the doctor all the time & # 34;.

He then briefly attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, but withdrew due to acting obligations; teachers threatened to suspend her for her constant absence from class, as she was busy going to auditions, despite getting good grades.Gellar graduated from Vocational Children's School in 1994 as a "direct" student. 3. 4; with a GPA of 4.0.As she spent a lot of time working on All My Children while "she was trying to graduate", most of her senior year was completed by a guided study.

Career

1980s

At the age of four, an agent saw her in an Upper Manhattan restaurant. Two weeks later, she auditioned for a role in the television movie, An Invasion Of Privacy, with Valerie Harper, Carol Kane, and Jeff Daniels. At the audition, Gellar read both her own lines and Harper's, impressing the directors enough to cast her in the role. The film aired on CBS in January 1983. She later appeared in a controversial television commercial for Burger King, in which his character criticized McDonald's and claimed that he only ate at Burger King. The ad led to a lawsuit from McDonald's, naming Gellar and banning him from eating in the food chain; he recalled in a 2004 interview: "I was not allowed to eat there. It was hard because, when you're a little kid, McDonald's is where all your friends have their birthday parties, so I missed a lot of apple pies'. Growing up, Gellar also worked as a model for Wilhelmina and acted in numerous television commercials.

During the 1980s, Gellar played minor roles in the films Over the Brooklyn Bridge (1984), Funny Farm (1988) and High Stakes (1989), and was also a guest star on several television series, such as Spencer: For Hire and Crossbow. At the age of nine, she appeared opposite Matthew Broderick and Eric Stoltz in the Broadway production of The Widow Claire. She appeared in the Kids Klassics Sing Along videos, Camp Melody and USS Songboat in 1986 and briefly served as co-host of the teen talk show Girl Talk, which aired in 1989.

1990s

In 1991 she was cast as a young Jacqueline Bouvier in A Woman Named Jackie, starring Roma Downey. The miniseries won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited Series. Gellar next took the lead role in the 1992 teen series Swans Crossing, which chronicled the lives of a group of wealthy teenagers. The series ran for one season and earned Gellar two Young Artist Award nominations, for Outstanding Younger Actress in a New Television Series and for Outstanding Younger Actress in an After-Prime Time Series. She made her soap opera debut on All My Children in 1993, playing Kendall Hart, the long-lost daughter of the character Erica Kane (Susan Lucci). When she landed the role, she complimented Gellar for having the acting talent and "energetic personality" that she had. necessary to face the experience of Lucci; Kendall was supposed to be like a younger version of Erica. Her run on the show was successful as "soap fans saw her as the second coming of Erica". The writers featured her more after its initial reception and became a household name for the soap opera medium. In 1995, at the age of eighteen, she won a Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series for her role. That same year, Gellar left the show to pursue other acting opportunities.

After her departure from All My Children she moved to Los Angeles, and in 1996 read the script for Joss Whedon's television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which follows Buffy Summers, a teenager charged with the responsibility of battling hidden enemies and supernatural occurrences. Originally, she did several screen tests for the role of Cordelia Chase, but after talking with Whedon and the producers about playing Buffy Summers, she auditioned again and was eventually cast in the lead role. The show premiered on March 1997, to critical and commercial acclaim, and Gellar's Buffy, created to subvert the stereotypical female horror movie victim, was described by Entertainment Weekly as one of the 100 The most important female characters on American television. Buffy ran for seven seasons (144 episodes), and during its broadcast, Buffy, played by Gellar, became a cult icon on television. United States, United Kingdom and Australia. The series earned Gellar five Teen Choice Awards, the Saturn Award for Best Genre Television Actress, and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a TV Series - Drama. She sang during the series' musical episode & #34;Once More, with Feeling", which spawned an original cast album, released in 2002.

During the initial run of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gellar made his first major motion picture appearances in two hit slasher films. In I Know What You Did Last Summer, opposite Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ryan Phillippe and Freddie Prinze, Jr., she took on the role of hapless aspiring beauty actress Helen Shivers. At $17 million, the film earned $125 million worldwide. The Washington Post found the cast to be "solid," according to what the San Francisco Chronicle described as a 'competent but uninspired' film. For her part, Gellar won a Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Favorite Supporting Actress – Horror and an MTV Movie Award nomination. & TV Awards for Best Breakthrough Performance. In Scream 2 (also 1997), Gellar played an equally hapless vain character, this time that of a sorority sister. She filmed her scenes between takes of Buffy and had recently finished work on I Know What You Did Last Summer . Despite the hectic schedule, he agreed to star in Scream 2 without having read the script, based on the success of the first film. Scream 2 grossed over $172 million of dollars worldwide.

In 1998, Gellar first hosted Saturday Night Live, and provided the voice of Gwendy Doll in Small Soldiers, a moderate commercial success. Gellar was also had its first appearance on the 'Most Beautiful' of People magazine, which cemented her status as & # 34;It girl & # 34; at the time. In 1999, she made a cameo appearance in the film She's All That, and took the lead role of a struggling restaurant owner in the romantic comedy Simply Irresistible, panned by critics. Gellar once called it a "bad choice," but Roger Ebert, on the other hand, found it "charming" in what he described as an "old-fashioned" comedy. In Cruel Intentions (1999), a modern retelling of Les Liaisons dangerreuses, Gellar played Kathryn Merteuil, a brunette cocaine addict with an appetite for manipulating people. The $10 million film was a box office success, grossing $75 million worldwide. Roger Ebert felt that she is "effective as a bright girl who knows exactly how to use her tramp act," and in an interview with the Chicago Tribune, director Roger Kumble, describing her work in the film, he said, "Without a doubt, she is the most professional actress I have ever worked with." Gellar and co-star Selma Blair won "Best Kiss" at the MTV Movie & TV Awards 2000. Around that time, she guest-starred on three episodes of Angel and appeared as Debbie in the episode "Escape from New York"; from the HBO series, Sex and the City.

2000s

Gellar played the daughter of a mobster in James Toback's independent drama Harvard Man, which premiered at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. Limited in theaters, Gellar's performance in it, along with Cruel Intentions, helped her shed her good-girl image. Gellar starred as Daphne Blake in the live-action comedy, Scooby-Doo, directed by Raja Gosnell and starring Freddie Prinze, Jr., Linda Cardellini and Matthew Lillard. Scooby-Doo earned more than $275 million, becoming Gellar's most watched film to date. It won the Teen Choice Award at the in the Best Comedy Film Actress category for her role in the film. Along with Jack Black, she hosted the 2002 MTV Movie Awards, which drew 7.1 million viewers on its June 6 broadcast, achieving the highest rating of the program at that time.

Gellar at the Dubai International Film Festival in 2004.

During her burgeoning film career, Gellar continued to work on the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but left the show after the seventh season. When asked why, she explained: "It's not about leaving for a career in film or theater, it's more of a personal decision. I need a break." all time and will go down in history like this. And I don't feel like it's an arrogant statement. We change the way people watch TV".

After the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gellar provided the voice for the character of Gina Vendetti in the Simpsons episode "The Wandering Juvie&# 34;, which aired in March 2004. Her next film was Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004), reprising the role of Daphne. Although IGN considered that both Gellar and Prinze "exhibit marked improvements over their work on 2002's [Scooby-Doo]", the film was a commercial success, grossing $181.4 million dollars worldwide. In the horror adaptation The Grudge (also 2004), Gellar played Karen Davis, an exchange student living and working in Tokyo who is exposed to a mysterious supernatural curse. Critic Rob Blackwelder wrote that she "played the part well, and her fear and disorientation are tremendously reinforced by the decision to keep the [original] setting in this remake." The film was a huge success. at the box office, grossing over $110 million in the United States and $187 million worldwide. He received an MTV Movie Award nomination for Best Scared Performance, as well as a Teen Choice Award nomination. Award for Best Movie Actress - Thriller for her role. Since 2005, she has voiced various characters in 13 episodes of the animated television series Robot Chicken, starting in 2018.

Sarah Michelle Gellar in 2007.

She starred opposite Dwayne Johnson, Seann William Scott and Justin Timberlake in Richard Kelly's Southland Tales (2006), as an adult film star working on the creation of a reality TV show. Gellar had met with Kelly and was drawn to the original ideas for the film, accepting the role even before reading the script. The film found a limited audience in theaters, but J. Hoberman for The Village Voice commented that the director "crafted two memorable comedic performances" by Gellar and Johnson. In 2006, Gellar also briefly reprized her role as Karen in the critically panned sequel The Grudge 2, and starred in the psychological thriller The Return, as a businesswoman. haunted by memories of her childhood and the mysterious death of a young woman. The film was a critical and commercial failure, grossing only $11 million. The New York Times called it a & #34;career stagnation".

In 2007, she voiced Ella in the poorly received animated film Happily N'Ever After, and also April O'Neil in TMNT, which earned $95 million. She starred in the romantic comedy Suburban Girl and the drama The Air I Breathe, both of which screened at the Tribeca Film Festival 2007. In Suburban Girl, opposite Alec Baldwin, she took on the role of a New York City editor and the love interest of a much older influential man (Baldwin). The film was released on DVD in January 2008. In the similarly rarely seen film The Air I Breathe, Gellar appeared with Forest Whitaker, Brendan Fraser and Kevin Bacon, playing an up-and-coming pop singer. The New York Times called it a "gangster movie with delusions of grandeur," while DVD Talk noted that "his character she has the deepest emotional arc here and hits all the right notes".

In 2007, Gellar starred in the psychological thriller Possession as a lawyer whose life is thrown into chaos after a car accident takes her husband (Michael Landes) and brother-in-law (Lee Pace) to coma. Due to financial problems at Yari Film Group, the film was released to DVD in March 2010. In the film adaptation Veronika Decides to Die, Gellar played a depressed young woman who rediscovers the joy of life when she discovers she only has days to live after a suicide attempt. Like Possession, the film failed to get a proper theatrical release in North America and was released for VOD in 2015. Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter found the actress to be "reasonably convincing" in what he called a "dumb heavy misfire".

2010s

Sarah Michelle Gellar at the Comic-Con in San Diego in 2011.

Gellar took a two-year hiatus from acting after the birth of her daughter in 2009, and in 2011, she signed on to star in and executive produce a new drama titled Ringer, in the who played the double role of twin sisters, one from whom she is on the run and manages to hide by assuming the wealthy life of the other. Gellar has stated that part of her decision to return to a television series was because she allowed him to work and raise her child.The series received positive reviews from critics, E! Online found it "amazing" and "fantastic", while TV Line felt it "does a good job" as both characters. Ringer went on to have a large fan base, but was canceled after the first season. For his performance, he received several award nominations, including one for Teen Choice Award, for Choice Television Actress - Drama.

In September 2011 she returned as a guest star on the ABC soap opera, All My Children before the end of the show, but not as Kendall Hart; she played a patient at Pine Valley Hospital telling Maria Santos that she is "Erica Kane's daughter," and stating that she saw vampires before they became fashionable, a reference to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He voiced a character in the American Dad! episode "Virtual In-Stanity", and again for the December 6, 2012 episode ("Adventures in Hayleysitting"). On September 30, 2012, she reprized her role as Gina Vendetti in the season 24 premiere episode of The Simpsons.

A fan of Robin Williams for years, once Gellar found out he was making the single-camera TV series The Crazy Ones, she contacted her friend Sarah from Sa Rego, the wife of Williams' best friend Bobcat Goldthwait, to push for a co-starring role. He landed the role of a publicity director who runs an agency with his father. Digital Spy felt Williams & #34;shares warm and genuine chemistry with her on-screen descendant, Gellar", to a mixed critical response. The series was canceled after one season, but earned Gellar a People& #39;s Choice for Favorite Actress in a New Television Series.

In March 2015, Gellar guest-starred as Cinderella in the Whitney Avalon YouTube channel's official video short, Princess Rap Battle, and was joined the cast of Star Wars Rebels for the second season, playing a recurring character known as the Seventh Sister. In early 2016, Gellar filmed a performance for NBC pilot for a potential television series based on the cult classic Cruel Intentions, reprising her role as Kathryn Merteuil. Ultimately, the pilot was not made into the series.

On May 16, 2019, Gellar appeared in the series finale of The Big Bang Theory.

2020s

In February 2020, she joined Netflix's main voice cast in Kevin Smith's Masters of the Universe: Revelation in the role of Teela.

Upcoming projects

On January 10, 2019, it was announced that Gellar would appear in the limited series, Sometimes I Lie, based on the best-selling book of the same name. The series was being produced by Gellar, as well as Ellen DeGeneres, in association with Warner Bros. Television. On August 22, 2019, it was reported that Gellar was attached to produce and appear in a pilot for Fox titled Other People's Houses.

On March 31, 2021, it was announced that Gellar had been cast in the Amazon Studios comedy pilot Hot Pink.

Public Image

Sarah Michelle Gellar at the annual gala n.o 69 of the Golden Globes in 2012.

Gellar has been featured on the covers and photo shoots of numerous magazines during his career. In February 1998 she appeared in Seventeen, and in subsequent years the list has grown to include Nylon, Marie Claire, Vogue , Glamour, Esquire, Allure, Cosmopolitan, FHM, Rolling Stone and Elle, among others. In 1999 she signed on to be the face of Maybelline, becoming the first celebrity spokeswoman for the company since Lynda Carter in the late 1970s. She was honored with a Woman of the Year award by Glamour magazine in October 2002, and in the same year, her wax figure by Madame Tussauds, was featured as part of the "Trail of Vampires" exhibition.

With her work on Buffy and mainstream films like Cruel Intentions, Gellar became a household name and sex symbol around the world, a status she cemented with being a feature multiple times on the annual Maxim "Hot 100" between 2002 and 2008. Wearing a black lace bra, she appeared on the cover of the December 2007 issue of Maxim and was named 2009 Woman of the Year by the magazine. number 1 in FHM's edition of "100 Sexiest Women" in 1999, and appeared on their 2005 list. She had also been on the German, Dutch, South African, Danish and Romanian editions of the magazine's list of the 100 Sexiest Women every year from 1998 onwards. Topsocialite.com listed her as the eighth sexiest woman of the '90s along with Alicia Silverstone, Gillian Anderson, and Shannen Doherty.

She appeared in Google's top 10 searches for women in 2002 and 2003, ranking at number 8, and was listed in Channel 4 UK's 100 Greatest Sex Symbols in 2007, ranking her at number 16. Other appearances and listings include: Entertainment Weekly ranked her in their Top 100 TV Icons in 2007, and placed her #3 in their Top 12 Artists of the Year in 1998, and Glamour ranked her among the 50 Best Dressed Women in the World 2004 and 2005 at number 17 and 24, respectively. BuddyTV also ranked her number 27 on the list of the 100 sexiest women of 2011 on television.

Gellar has appeared in commercials for "Got Milk?", as well as the music video for Stone Temple Pilots, "Sour Girl" and "Comin 'Up From Behind" by Marcy Playground. She was featured on the cover of Gotham and its lead story in the March 2008 issue, in which she discussed how her style has evolved since she turned 30. Gellar said: "Sounds cliché, but when women turn 30, they find themselves. You feel more comfortable in your own skin. Last night at Letterman I wore this skintight dress by Herve Leger. Two years ago, three years ago? I would never have used it".

Income and Status

She is considered one of the most versatile and successful actresses in Hollywood due to her relentless professionalism and her ability to play many different characters. She has collaborated with renowned actors such as: Brendan Fraser, Reese Witherspoon, Dwayne Johnson, Alicia Silverstone, Selma Blair, Alec Baldwin, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ryan Phillippe, Robin Williams, among others. It was reported in September 2008 that Gellar's films have grossed over $627.3 million.

Other projects

Charitable Activities

Gellar is an active supporter of several charities, including breast cancer research, Project Angel Food, Habitat for Humanity, and CARE, a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty, which claims to reach &# 34;to do something physically". Of his charitable activities, he says, "I started because my mother taught me a long time ago that even when you have nothing, there are ways to give back." And what you get in return is ten times that. But it was always difficult because I couldn't do much. 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 time, it's amazing".

In 1999, he went to the Dominican Republic to help with a Habitat for Humanity project to build housing for the residents; Gellar recalled in an interview that he had worked extensively with the cause, explaining: "Actually, you can do something physically, where you can go and build these houses. I like to work with things where you can directly affect someone in particular". With Project Angel Food, he delivered healthy meals to people infected with AIDS and, through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, granted wishes the children sick from meeting her while working on Buffy. of Vaseline, with other actors such as Hilary Duff, Amanda Bynes and John Leguizamo. She agreed to auction nude photos of herself on eBay, to raise funds for the Coalition of Skin Diseases, an organization that supports clinical research, encourages physician and patient education.

In May 2011, Gellar joined "The Nestlé Share the Joy of Reading Program", which promotes reading among young children to encourage them to read during school hours. summer vacation. The following year, he received the Tom Mankiewicz Leadership Award during the Beastly Ball at the Los Angeles Zoo. The honor recognizes members of the entertainment community who have excelled in establishing meaningful and enduring programs that contribute to the well-being of the world's natural and civic environment. In 2014 and 2015, Gellar hosted two fundraisers for Mattel Children's UCLA Hospital.

Food Stirs

In October 2015, Gellar, along with entrepreneurs Galit Laibow and Greg Fleishman, co-founded Foodstirs, a brand of startup food creation sold through e-commerce and retail., family-friendly, and organic baking mixes. As of early 2017, the brand's products were available in some 400 stores; by the end of the year, strong interest from retailers increased its distribution to 8,000 stores. In 2018, Foodstirs reached an agreement with Starbucks to carry its cake mixes in 8,000 stores.

Cookbook

She released a cookbook titled "Stirring up Fun with Food" on April 18, 2017. Gia Russo co-authored the book and presented numerous ideas for making food.

Private life

Gellar and her husband at the Tribeca Film Festival, May 2007.

She met her future husband, Freddie Prinze, Jr., while filming the 1997 teen horror film I Know What You Did Last Summer, but the two did not begin dating until 2000; at the MTV awards ceremony, which they attended as a couple. They got engaged in April 2001 while filming Scooby Doo together, and were married in Mexico on September 1, 2002, in a ceremony officiated by Adam Shankman, director and choreographer. with whom Gellar had worked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Prinze and Gellar have worked together several times; played respective love interests as Fred and Daphne in the 2002 film Scooby-Doo and its sequel, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, and both provided their voices for the animated film Happily N'Ever After (2007) and the science fiction animated film series Star Wars Rebels. In 2007, in honor of their fifth year of marriage, Gellar legally changed her name to Sarah Michelle Prinze.

They have two children together: a daughter born in 2009, named Charlotte Grace Prinze; and a son born in 2012, named Rocky James. The family lives in Los Angeles, California.

On February 10, 2021, he expressed his support for his Buffy the Vampire Slayer co-star, Charisma Carpenter, after she accused series creator Joss Whedon of abuse. Gellar stated, "While I'm proud my name is associated with Buffy Summers, I don't want to be forever associated with Joss Whedon."

She is friends with other well-known actresses including Michelle Trachtenberg, Shannen Doherty, Lindsay Sloane, Kristin Chenoweth, and Selma Blair. Gellar has said in interviews that she believes in God, but that she does not belong to an organized religion. She has also said on occasion that she collects rare editions of children's literature classics. He has five tattoos: a symbol of integrity on his lower back, a heart, a dagger, and a cherry blossom on his ankle, two dragonflies on his back, and the initials of his two sons on his arm.

Filmography

Movies

TV series

Other appearances

Awards and nominations

She has been nominated for numerous awards throughout her career. Her first two nominations were for Young Artist Awards for participating in Swans Crossing. In 1994 and 1995, she was nominated again for Young Artist Awards and for her participation in All My Children, a series that earned him his first award, a Daytime Emmy in 1995, an award for which he competed for the first time in 1994. The film I Know What You Did Last Summer garnered her a Blockbuster Entertainment Awards , and her first nomination at the MTV Movie & TV Awards. The series Buffy the Vampire Slayer brought her a Saturn Award along with six subsequent nominations in the Best Actress on Television category; four Kids' Choice Awards and an award in 2002; five-time Teen Choice Awards winner with one nomination in 2001; two SFX Awards awards, one Young Hollywood Awards award and nominations for the Young Artist Awards, Golden Globe Awards, TCA Awards and Satellite Awards. Cruel Intentions brought her a Teen Choice Awards for Best Villain and two MTV Movie Awards together for one nomination. Scooby-Doo a Teen Choice Awards Award along with a shared nomination with Freddie Prinze Jr.. The Grudge earned him a MTV Movie Awards and Teen Choice Awards. Ringer brought her nominations for the Virgin Media TV Award (UK) and Teen Choice Awards , the last award for her being in 2014; this was a People's Choice for Favorite Actress in a New TV Series for The Crazy Ones.