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Sarah Michelle Prinze , (born April 14, 1977) better known by her birth name of Sarah Michelle Gellar , is an American actress. She is best known for her role as the character Buffy Summers in the acclaimed television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer , for which she won the Saturn Award for Best Genre TV Actress and received a Golden Globe Award nomination. She won a Daytime Emmy Award for her role in All My Children as character Kendall Hart.

She has since become known as a film actress, starring in the family film Scooby-Doo (2002) as Daphne Blake, and the American remake of Japanese horror film The Grudge (2004) and its sequel The Grudge 2 (2006). Earlier establishing roles include the teen drama Cruel Intentions (1999); the slasher film I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997); and the independent film Harvard Man (2001). Most recently she played an ex-porn star in Richard Kelly's Southland Tales (2007) and as part of an ensemble cast in The Air I Breathe (2008). Her many horror roles have established Gellar as a "scream queen".

Biography

Early life

Gellar was born in New York City, the only child of Rosellen (née Greenfield), a nursery school teacher, and Arthur Gellar, a garment worker. 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 . She also became close friends with Lindsay Sloane, who (in September 2002) would be her bridesmaid at her wedding.

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, 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 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 was on the set of this soap opera that she met Michelle Trachtenberg who would later join the Buffy the Vampire Slayer cast.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Gellar left All My Children in 1995 amid rumors 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, mostly vampires. The show was well received by critics and audiences alike, spawning a spin-off series ( Angel ), which featured two episodes in which she notably guest starred. Throughout its seven seasons and a total of 144 episodes, Buffy , and by extension Gellar, became cult icons in the United States, the UK and Australia, particularly as archetypes of "empowered" women. Gellar 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. Gellar has declined to lend her voice to the various Buffy video games, and another actress voiced Buffy for an animated series based on the show, which never aired.

Magazine covers and other appearances

Gellar has appeared on the covers of Cosmopolitan, Glamour, FHM, Rolling Stone , and other magazines. She was featured in Maxim magazine's "Hot 100" list in 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2008 and in FHM 's "100 Sexiest Women" of 2005. She was voted number 1 in the magazine's 1999 edition. In 1998, she was named one of People' s "50 Most Beautiful People (in the World)". Gellar has appeared in "Got Milk?" ads as well as in the Stone Temple Pilots music video "Sour Girl". In 2007, she was ranked #54 on FHM Hot 100 List and was a celebrity spokesperson for Maybelline. Wearing a black lace brassiere, she was on the cover of the December 2007 issue of Maxim magazine and was named Maxim magazine's 2008 Woman of the Year. In 2008 she ranked in the top 5 of Maxims "Hot 100" list.

Film career

Gellar attempted to capitalize on her television fame with a motion picture career, and had 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 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 United States. 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). 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 in October 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 the following month. She then lent her voice to two animated films: the animated fairy tale Happily N'Ever After , and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles . She followed those with a string of films including Southland Tales , The Air I Breathe , Suburban Girl (earlier known as "A Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing"), and Possession (a supernatural thriller based on the South Korean film Jungdok known to English language audiences as Addicted ). Southland Tales opened at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2006 and was released in the US in November 2007. The Air I Breathe and Suburban Girl were screened at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. Suburban Girl eventually went straight to video in early 2008, while The Air I Breathe was released theatrically the same month to generally poor reviews. The New York Times called it a "gangster movie with delusions of grandeur." However, Gellar's performance was praised. DVD Talk Review noted that "her character here has the deepest emotional arc, and she hits all the right notes." Possession has had a number of different rel