Sarah Michelle Gellar

Sarah Michelle Gellar is the actress who portrayed Buffy Summers on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel television series. Appearing as Buffy in all 144 episodes of Buffy and in five of Angel, she additionally portrayed James Stanley, Buffy Summers (Wishverse), Faith Lehane, the Buffybot, and the First Evil.

Career[]

After being found by an agent in a local restaurant in New York City, Gellar had a role in the made-for-TV movie An Invasion of Privacy (1983) and went on to appear in shows like Spenser: For Hire. She originated the role of Kendall Hart on the ABC daytime soap opera All My Children, winning the 1995 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series."

Gellar came into prominence in the late 1990s when she landed significant parts in the successful horror films I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream 2 and played Buffy Summers on the hit television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for which she won six Teen Choice Awards and the Saturn Award for Best Genre TV Actress and received a Golden Globe Award nomination. She found film critics praise for her performance in the 1999 teen drama Cruel Intentions.

Because of scheduling conflicts with Buffy, Gellar went on to refuse roles for films such as American Beauty (1999), Fight Club (1999), The Wedding Planner (2001), and Gangs of New York (2002).^[1]

Gellar subsequently appeared in the box office hits Scooby-Doo (2002), Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004), and the American remake of Japanese horror film The Grudge (2004). She hosted Saturday Night Live three times between 1998 and 2002. Since then, she has starred in limited released and straight-to-video films such as 2006's Southland Tales, 2007's Suburban Girl, and 2008's The Air I Breathe. In 2009, Gellar also starred in the film Veronika Decides to Die.

Gellar attended the PaleyFest Buffy the Vampire Slayer Reunion panel in 2008.

Gellar is featured as a playable character in the Call of Duty: Black Ops map pack Escalation (2011). She headlined the short-lived television series Ringer (2011–2012) and The Crazy Ones (2013–2014).

In October 2015, Gellar co-founded Foodstirs Junk-Free Bakery with friends Greg Fleishman and Galit Laibow, a startup better-for-you baking mix, kit and snack company selling via e-commerce and retail. She released a cook book titled Stirring up Fun with Food in April 2017.

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

In 2022, Gellar announced her return to the supernatural world when it was revealed that she had joined Paramount+'s new werewolf drama Wolf Pack as arson investigator Kristin Ramsey. In 2024, Gellar was cast as the CSI Chief Tanya Martin in the upcoming drama series Dexter: Original Sin.

Buffyverse[]

Gellar appeared in all 144 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which makes her and Alyson Hannigan (Willow) the only two actors to appear in every episode. She acted as well in the unaired Buffy the Vampire Slayer pilot and two original Buffy ad campaigns: Let 'Em Eat Stake (1997) and A Buffy Christmas (1998).

In addition to her title role as Buffy Summers, Gellar portrayed:

James Stanley in "I Only Have Eyes for You";
Buffy Summers (Wishverse) in "The Wish" and the archive footage in "Doppelgängland";
Faith Lehane in "This Year's Girl" and "Who Are You?";
the Buffybot in "Intervention," "The Gift," "Bargaining, Part One," and "Bargaining, Part Two";
and the First Evil in "Lessons," "Selfless," "Sleeper," "Never Leave Me," "Showtime," "Dirty Girls," "Empty Places," "Touched," "End of Days," and "Chosen."

In the spin-off series Angel, Gellar guest starred in two episodes, with additional three uncredited appearances:

"City Of" (Only in archive footage)
"The Bachelor Party" (Only in archive footage)
"I Will Remember You"
"Sanctuary"
"Soul Purpose" (Only in archive footage)

It is a commonly held but mistaken belief that the producers sought Gellar for the Angel episode "The Girl in Question." David Fury has explained this: "There was very, very little talk about that. No, she was never going to be in that. The missed opportunity to see Buffy was always going to be the joke of that. [...] We never expected Sarah to be in that episode. We did think she might be in the second last episode, "Power Play," just like Angel appeared in the second last episode of Buffy's finale. We thought we'd do that but wound up not."^[2]