In can be rough trying to balance a normal life with the cult of celebrity
.......Sarah Michelle Gellar is the
queen of contradictions. The 23-year-old star of Buffy the
Vampire Slayer is one of Hollywood's most opinionated and
outspoken actresses, yet also one of it's most private. She is
supremely focused and clear-headed, yet speaks at warp speed,
rarely concluding one topic before hurling herself into the next.
She is sweet yet sassy, insecure yet audaciously self-confident.
(Webster's says: audacious - daring, bold) A role model for
millions of young people (both male and female), Gellar is avidly
anti-drug and almost puritanically opposed to discussing sex, yet
can toss her convictions aside for movie roles (she played a coke-snorting villainess in Cruel Intentions) and the
occasional fashion spread (she appeared on the cover of Rolling
Stone dressed in red leather and brandishing a whip). (I don't
know about you, but I think the author made a mistake here,
'cause I didn't see a whip. I sooo would have remembered that!)
Gellar is, quite simply, one of a kind.
......."I made a decision, a rule, really, when I was very young that I would always stay true to myself," says Gellar over lunch in her Buffy trailer. "It's important that I go to bed every night happy with who I am and with the choices I've made. I've seen alot of people's lives go off-track in this buisness...and I don't ever want to do that. All the time I ask my friends, 'I haven't changed, have I? I'm still the same person, right?'"
.......Gellar's popularity as the stake-weilding, butt-kicking Buffy has put this to the test. A few months ago, she was being photographed for the cover of a major entertainment magazine when Gellar abruptly changed her mind. "They wanted it sexier and sexier and I just couldn't do it," she says, still bothered by the incident. "I said, 'You know what, guys? What you want is not for me'. And I left the shoot. I just walked out. I do what's sexy only to the degree I feel comfortable. I have a problem with so many actors these days going nude for magazines. I thought we were promoting our talents, not our bodies."She is quick to point out that Cruel Intentions was "very sexy and my character did alot of risque things, including kiss another woman, but she never actually had sex and I never showed a thing....I'm not saying I'd never appear nude in a film if I thought it was important, but that script has yet to come along."
.......A working actress since age four, Gellar spent her teen years in
soaps, first in Swan's Crossing and then All My
Children, where she won a Daytime Emmy as brat Kendall Hart.
It was there that Gellar realized she had bigger dreams than most
of her co-stars. "Everyone told me not to leave AMC and I mean
everybody," Gellar recalls. "They petrified me! They
reminded me of every soap star who left daytime and couldn't get
arrested. They said, You'll never work. You'll come crawling
back. '" For awhile, it looked like they were right: Gellar quit
the New York-based soap, headed west and found herself barely
able to land an audition. "My Emmy was meaningless," she recalls.
"I mean, I figured I'd at least get a little episodic work, maybe
a small role in a movie, maybe a lousy pilot, but I got
nothing." A half-year later, her world turned. Gellar was
cast in the TV Movie Beverly Hills Family Robinson and,
while filming it in Australia, she was paged to audition for
Buffy.
.......Born in New York City, Gellar was raised primarily by her mother,
Rosellen, a schoolteacher. The actress is estranged fro her
father, Authur, a salesman, and has little to say about him.
Gellar is equally tight-lipped about her love life. Though she is
rumored to have romanced actors Freddy Prinze Jr, Matthew Perry,
David Boreanaz and Jerry O'Connell, as well as Buffy creator Joss
Whedon, Gellar insists that anyone paparazzi catch her with is
"just a good friend."
.......Though Gellar has never publically admitted to being in a
romantic relationship, she assures us she has had boyfriends,
even if these days she's flying solo. "I go out of my way to keep
that private. I don't want to pick up some supermarket tabloid
and find people making judgements about me or read reports about
how my guy's cheating. It would put doubt in my mind. I'd be
miserable."
......."My true fans appreciate and respect that I won't discuss certain
things," she adds. "The ones who want to dig into my life and
make me uncomfortable are not my true fans."
