Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar has snared hot young actor Freddie Prinze Jr. - right from under the nose of her former movie co-star Jennifer Love Hewitt

.......Freddie and Sarah have been dating for several weeks, and NW has the first romantic pictures of the couple, out together in Los Angeles. Their new liaison makes for an interesting love triangle, as, until recently, Freddie has been dating Jennifer, who co-starred with Sarah and Freddie in the teen slasher flick "I Know What You Did Last Summer". As recently as January, Jennifer and Freddie, who actually played boyfriend and girlfriend in the movie, were pictured hugging and kissing in the front yard of his bachelor pad in the up-market LA suburb Toluca Lake. At the time, Jennifer, 21, had broken up with MTV host Carson Daley, and Freddie had split from his long-term girlfriend, soap star Kimberly McCullough. Freddie was often seen on the set of Jennifer's doomed TV show "Time of Your Life", and insiders said they couldn't keep their hands off each other. But just months later, it seems the 24-year-old star of "She's all That" and "Wing Commander" has been wooed away by his other co-star. Sarah, 22, and freddie have been friends since shooting "I Know What You Did Last Summer", and last week the couple made their new romance public when they ventured out to lunch together in LA. The pair held hands and kissed throughout the meal, and later drove home to Freddie's house where (romantic sign here) he whisked her out of the car and carried her to the door. Freddie and Sarah have been out and about at a number of Hollywood nightclubs and restaurants over the last couple of weeks, and even though their relationship is only in the infancy, Freddie has already told friends that Sarah's his perfect woman. "Sarah's just the kind of girl I have been looking for" he says.

.......As for Jennifer, this romantic snub seems to be just the latest in a string of disasters for the petite actress. Her two-year romance with Carson Daly came to a sudden end, not long after reports she was having an affair with her married "Party of Five" co-star Scott Bairstow. Her new series "Time of your Life" bombed, and her Audrey Hepburn movie is rumoured to be so bad that US TV networks are reluctant to buy it. Meanwhile, Sarah's "Buffy" is going from strength to strength, and her romantic life is finally blooming. Frends say the actress is extremely fussy when it comes to men, and few have lasted long. She's had a few brief relationships, with "Friends" star Matthew Perry and Jerry O'Connell, and even had a brief flirtation with former co-star David Boreanaz (now in "Angel"), but she hasn't had a serious boyfriend in years. "At the end of the day, none of them fulfiled her expectations" says a friend. "So Sarah has been spending nights at home studying scripts with dog, Thor. That was until Freddie came along. Now she's found a guy she's really interested in".