Celebrity biographies

Sarah Gellar
A petite, soulful-eyed, young actress who went from playing the daughter Erica Kane bore after a rape on ABC's "All My Children" to being "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (The WB, 1997-2001; UPN, 2001- ), Sarah Michelle Gellar earned a Daytime Emmy Award (for "All My Children") before she was old enough to legally order the celebratory champagne. Acting from age four, she made her professional debut as Valerie Harper's daughter in the 1983 CBS TV-movie "An Invasion of Privacy". The next year, the brunette could be seen in a small role in the big screen "Over the Brooklyn Bridge", which starred Elliot Gould. Billed as Sarah Gellar, she also appeared in the feature "High Stakes" (1989). In the early 90s, she was in the pre-Broadway production of Neil Simon's "Jake's Woman" and played supported Matthew Broderick (then Eric Stoltz) in the Off-Broadway production of Horton Foote's "The Widow Claire".

Her TV career also began in earnest in the 90s. Gellar played the young Jacqueline Bouvier in the NBC miniseries "A Woman Named Jackie" in 1991, and was one of the adolescents in a small wealthy suburb on the short-lived syndicated soap opera "Swan's Crossing" (1992). For two years (1993-1995), she played the role of the scheming Kendall Hart on ABC's "All My Children". Her character was supposed to be the child born to Erica Kane (Susan Lucci) after a teen-age rape who arrived in town determined to make Erica pay dearly for having given her up for adoption at birth. Gellar was twice-nominated for an Emmy and shortly after winning in 1995, it was announced she would be leaving the show. Rumors swirled about the young actress and her relationship with the veteran Lucci. (Gellar was quoted by TV GUIDE as saying "We didn't have a perfect working relationship.")

Relocating to California, Gellar won the role of Dyan Cannon's spoiled daughter in the Disney ABC TV-movie movie "Beverly Hills Family Robinson" (1997). She then landed the leading role as Buffy, based on the 1992 feature. Playing a high school teen who is "the chosen one" of her generation to destroy vampires but who also would like to have a normal adolescence, Gellar won critical praise for her comic abilities and her physicality. She also landed a major role alongside rising stars Ryan Phillippe, future husband-to-be Freddie Prinze Jr and Jennifer Love Hewitt in "I Know What You Did Last Summer" (1997) and a smaller part as one of Neve Campbell's college chums in "Scream 2" (also 1997), both from the pen of screenwriter Kevin Williamson. While she floundered in the romantic comedy "Simply Irresistable" (the film wasn't), Gellar shone as a teenage version of the Marquise de Merteuil in "Cruel Intentions" (both 1997), the surprisingly adept resetting of the French classic "Les Liaisons Dangereuse" to tony Manhattan. The actress next graced the big screen in "Harvard Man" (2001), a sexy cheerleader and Mafia princess who seduces the title character. Geller then reunited with Prinze to co-star in the live-action version of the popular cartoon "Scooby Doo" (2002), an ironic in-joke as the crimefighters on her TV series were nicknamed "the Scooby gang".