Sarah Michelle Gellar is an American actress. She is well known as the fictional character Buffy Summers in the acclaimed television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for which she received a Golden Globe Award nomination. She won a Daytime Emmy Award for her role in All My Children.

She has since become known as a film actress, having starred in the family film Scooby-Doo (2002) and the sequel Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004), the romantic comedy Simply Irresistible, the independent film Harvard Man (2001), the teen drama Cruel Intentions (1999) and the horror films The Return (2006), The Grudge 2 (2006), The Grudge (2004), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and Scream 2 (1997). She was in the tv movie Beverly Hills Family Robinson (1998) and provided the voice of April O'Neil in the film TMNT and Ella (better known as Cinderella) in the film Happily N'Ever After.

She has also starred in several films that have yet to be released, including Southland Tales (November 9th 2007), The Air I Breathe (January 25th 2008), Suburban Girl (DVD on January 15th 2008) and Addicted (which according to some reports has been renamed to Possession) (February 29th 2008) . She is currently attached to the film version of the video game American McGee's Alice.

Gellar was born in New York City, the only child of Rosellen, 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.

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.

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 (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 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".

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.