Sarah Michelle Gellar was born on April 14 1977 in New York. An only child, she was raised on New York's Upper East Side by her schoolteacher mother, Rosellen Gellar.

At the age of three-and-a-half she was spotted by an agent whilst dining at a restaurant with her mother. Within weeks she was cast in a TV commercial.

By the age of four she made her first commercial, acting for Burger King and complaining that McDonalds served skimpy burgers. McDonalds sued her employers, thus beginning the infamous "Battle of the Burgers". The case was eventually settled out of court in 1982. Luckily this early exposure to the more unpleasant side of the entertainment industry did not put her off a career in acting. Since Burger King, Sarah appeared in over one hundred commercials filmed over the following years which brought in a healthy income.

At six, she had landed her first role in TV: playing Valerie Harper's (from the TV series Rhoda) daughter in the 1983 TV movie, "An Invasion of Privacy".

Her father Arthur Gellar divorced her mother in 1984 when Sarah was seven years old. Sarah never says much about her father in interviews.
During Sarah's years at Columbia Grammar School, 5 West 93rd Street, across Central Park from where she lived, Sarah had strong support from her mother. She calls her mother "the most amazing woman that I've ever met and probably will ever meet in my entire life".

Her principal called her mother "supersupportive" and tells how she emphasized Sarah's education. In Sarah's words: ". . . I was going to school, acting, skating, and doing Tae Kwan Do all at one time. No human being can do that, and my mom's rule always was, if my grades got below an A-, I had to stop working. 'You can pick two things, you can't do them all. And, school has to be one of them'. So I chose acting".

As well as her acting, Sarah still found time to excel as a competitive figure ice-skater, placing as high as 3rd in the New York State regional competition. She also gained a brown belt in Tae Kwan Do.

Her mother's support was essential to get her through the tough times of trying to juggle her fledgling acting career with a normal school life. Sarah had such choices to make as going to a slumber party or going to an audition.

As a result of her acting success, Sarah felt isolated and was left out of things by her fellow students.

Life became a little easier when Sarah changed schools to New York's famous Professional Children's School.
Here, even though she still had to decide between the Junior Prom and the Emmy's, she was not alone in having to make such decisions. Her peers also had similar balancing acts between education and career.

During the next few years Sarah turned her hand to a bit of everything : small parts in movies, TV and a TV Mini Series.
Sarah landed a handful of larger roles -- Over the Brooklyn Bridge (1984), Funny Farm (1988) and High Stakes(1989); in the TV series Spenser: For Hire (1986) and in a Circle in the Square production of Horton Foote's The Widow Claire along with Matthew Broderick and Eric Stoltz.

At the age of fourteen, Sarah won her first major role as the young Jacqueline Bouvier in the NBC TV Mini Series, A Woman Named Jackie (1991). From strength to strength, in 1992 Sarah won the lead role of Sydney Rutledge in the syndicated teen soap opera Swan's Crossing. She also landed a promising part as Molly in Neil Simon's play Jake's Women, which unfortunately never made it to Broadway.
In 1993, Sarah Michelle Gellar got the part of Kendall Hart (Erica Kane's long-lost bad daughter) on the daytime soap-drama All My Children.

In this character, Gellar gained some valuable acting experience: seducing her stepfather, forcing the breakup of one of her mother's numerous marriages, faking a pregnancy, shooting people, attempting suicide and falling into a coma.
She was nominated for an Emmy in 1994, although didn't win the award. But in 1995 she was nominated again and this time went home with the Emmy award for Outstanding Younger Actress
Just after this award, Sarah left All My Children and headed west to California to star in a TV movie comedy, Beverly Hills Family Robinson

Sarah as Buffy Summers gives teenagers a role model, girls want to be like her or want to be her friend and boys want to date her (what else?!). The show had a fabulous five season run on the WB network, giving a boost in ratings before being sold to Fox's UPN network for season 6.

Sarah's movie career started in earnest in 1997 with two movies, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream 2 (Wes Craven's sequel to the 1996 movie Scream).

Over the summer of 1998 in the break between shooting seasons of Buffy, Sarah starred in another two movies, Cruel Intentions and Simply Irresistible, both released in 1999. This time as leading roles in both movies. Although Simply Irresistible, a whimsical romance released in time for St Valentine's day flopped, the stronger Cruel Intentions was well received if not a blockbuster.

Two more movies are to be released this year (2002). The first is an indie, Harvard Man which stars Sarah as a Boston college cheerleader who is dating the point guard for the Harvard basketball team and with her mob boss father gets him mixed up with sports betting.

The second is a brave animation-turned-movie in the vein of X-Men and Spiderman which proved the formula. In June 2002 Scooby Doo is released with Sarah playing the part of Daphne alongside her fiancé Freddie Prinze Jr as Fred.
As for the future there are always rumors rebounding all over the net about possible castings to this or that new movie. One thing is for sure, after an Emmy, a hit cult-TV series now in its 6th season and four movies with leading roles we will definitely be seeing more of Sarah over the coming years!