Sarah Michelle Prinze (née Gellar GHEL-ər; born April 14, 1977) is an American actress. She is known for portraying strong female characters in film and television, and is regarded as a scream queen for her work in the horror genre.
After being spotted by a talent agent as a child, Gellar began her career on television at age five. She obtained her first leading role in the syndicated teen drama series Swans Crossing (1992) and had her breakthrough as Kendall Hart on the ABC soap opera All My Children (1993–1995), for which she won a Daytime Emmy Award. She achieved international recognition for her portrayal of Buffy Summers on the WB/UPN supernatural series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), which earned her a Saturn Award and a nomination for a Golden Globe.
In film, Gellar has played leading and supporting roles in I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), Scream 2 (1997), Cruel Intentions (1999), Scooby-Doo (2002), Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004), The Grudge (2004), Southland Tales (2006), Do Revenge (2022), and Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (2026). Her other television credits include Ringer (2011–2012), The Crazy Ones (2013–2014), Wolf Pack (2023), and Dexter: Original Sin (2024–2025).
As a voice actor, Gellar has appeared in such projects as Small Soldiers (1998), Robot Chicken (2005–2018), Happily N'Ever After (2006), TMNT (2007), Call of Duty: Black Ops (2011), Star Wars Rebels (2015–2016), and Masters of the Universe: Revelation (2021). In addition to acting, she co-founded Foodstirs, an e-commerce baking company that operated from 2015 to 2022, released the cookbook Stirring Up Fun with Food (2017), and served as a judge on Star Search (2026).
Early life
Gellar was born in New York City on April 14, 1977. She is the only child of Rosellen (née Greenfield), a nursery school teacher, and Arthur Gellar, a garment worker. Both of her parents are Jewish. In 1984, when she was only seven, her parents divorced and she was raised by her mother on Manhattan's Upper East Side. While growing up, she lost contact with her father, from whom she remained estranged until he died in 2001 when she was only 24. She once described him as "non-existent", and stated: "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 so little to say." Gellar was a competitive figure skater, once finishing in third place at a New York State regional competition, and obtained a black belt in taekwondo.
With her single mother working "just above the poverty line", Gellar received a partial scholarship to study at the Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School, where she experienced bullying. She remarked: "I was different and that's the one thing you can't be at school, because you're ostracised. I didn't have the money these kids had". As a working child actress, she was not present in class for a considerable amount of time, and recalled having "more absences in the first month than you're supposed to have for an entire year". She then briefly attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, but dropped out due to acting obligations. Gellar graduated from the Professional Children's School in 1994 as a "straight A" student with a 4.0 grade average. As she spent significant time working on All My Children while "trying to graduate", the majority of her senior year was completed through guided study.
Career
Beginnings and breakthrough (1981–1996)
At the age of four, Gellar was spotted by an agent in a restaurant in Upper Manhattan. Two weeks later, she auditioned for a part in the television film An Invasion of Privacy. At the audition, she read both her own lines and those of Valerie Harper, impressing the directors enough to cast her in the role. The film aired on CBS in January 1983.
While growing up, Gellar appeared in television commercials for a variety of brands, such as Burger King, Shake 'n Bake, Duncan Hines, Milton Bradley, LJN, and Avon. A 1982 advertisement for Burger King, in which she claimed the brand made larger and better tasting burgers than competitor McDonald's, was one of the first attack ads in the fast food industry. Executives at McDonald's parent company were so enraged that they sued all parties involved, naming Gellar and reportedly banning her from eating at the food chain. In a 2004 interview, she recalled: "I wasn't allowed to eat there. It was tough because, when you're a little kid, McDonald's is where all your friends have their birthday parties, so I missed out on a lot of apple pies." She was signed as a model for Wilhelmina.
Gellar appeared in a safety skit during the September 28, 1982 episode of Late Night with David Letterman, and returned for the December 11, 1985 episode, during "The Guy Under the Stairs" segment, playing Suzy Walker. Throughout the 1980s, she was a guest performer in the television series Love, Sidney, Guiding Light, Spenser: For Hire, and Crossbow, and played uncredited roles in the films Over the Brooklyn Bridge (1984) and Funny Farm (1988), though her scene in the latter was cut. She obtained a larger role as the daughter of a prostitute in the B thriller High Stakes (1989). In 1989, she shared hosting duties with Soleil Moon Frye and Rod Brogan in the syndicated weekly variety show Girl Talk, based on the board game of the same name. It only produced five episodes.
Gellar made her stage debut in the off-Broadway production The Widow Claire (1986–1987) at the Circle in the Square Theatre. She portrayed 13-year-old Mollie in the initial production of Neil Simon's play Jake's Women, which ran at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California, from March to April 1990. In 1991, she was cast as a young Jacqueline Bouvier in A Woman Named Jackie. The miniseries won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited Series. Gellar obtained her first leading role, as a mayor's manipulative daughter, in the 1992 syndicated teen serial Swans Crossing, which chronicled the lives of a group of wealthy teenagers. She felt that playing a "villainous" character gave her the call for "better and more varied acting skills", while the gig's weekly payment proved a financial aid for Gellar and her mother. The series ran for a 65-episode season and earned her two Young Artist Award nominations for Best Young Actress.
Gellar made her debut on the ABC soap opera All My Children in 1993, playing Kendall Hart, the long-lost teenage daughter of character Erica Kane (Susan Lucci). As she got the role, Gellar was complimented as having the acting talent and the "forceful personality" needed to go up against Lucci's experience; Kendall was supposed to be like a younger version of Erica. Her stint on the show was successful as "longtime fans of the soap saw her as the second coming of Erica". Writers showcased her more after her initial reception and she became a household name to the soap opera medium. In 1995, at the age of eighteen, she won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series for the role. The same year, Gellar left the show and moved to Los Angeles to pursue other acting opportunities. In 1996, she filmed the ABC television film Beverly Hills Family Robinson, in which she played a spoiled adolescent.
Worldwide recognition (1997–2003)
After reading the script for Joss Whedon's television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which follows Buffy Summers, a teenager burdened with the responsibility of fighting occult foes and supernatural occurrences, Gellar screen tested for the role of Cordelia Chase. Whedon then asked her to come back in and audition for the title role. The show premiered in March 1997, to widespread critical and popular acclaim. Gellar's Buffy, created to subvert the stereotypical female horror movie victim, was described by Entertainment Weekly as one of the 100 greatest female characters in American television. Buffy ran for seven seasons and 144 episodes, and during its…