GETTING HER TEETH INTO THE PART:
Sarah, with Arch-Enemy Dracula

......And journalists approach Sarah Michelle gellar equally cautiously. The 24-year-old actress has become TV Royalty through the success of her show - and has a rather regal attitude, too. And if she doesn't like a question, she'll slay you with just a look. Out of bounds, for example, is her forthcoming wedding to Freddie Prinze Jr, 25, the son of actor Freddy Prinze (Chico and The Man) who committed suicide in the 70's. The pair met on the set of their 1997 hit horror film "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and are co-starring in the forthcoming live-action movie version of the cartoon classic Scooby-Doo. They have been seen in public canoodling and announced their engagement at Sarah's birthday party. Still, the atmosphere turns positively Arctic when the subject of wedding bells is raised, though she sports a sparkling diamond ring.
......"I've come to the conclusion that the best way to keep your sanity and to keep your basic person grounded is to have a life that is completely seperate," she says, coolly.
......On the other hand, maybe she's just being cautious about announcing their love to the world. After all, Buffy has hardly been lucky with her blokes in the series. Every time it looks like she's found The One, the affair crumbles faster than a vampire on a sunbed. Angel was a 400-year-old bloodsucker with a neck the size of a tree trunk, who eventually left her for another series. And her musclebound new hunk Riley may have shown his love by tearing a microchip out of his shoulder to save Buff, but he still can't cope with a girl being able to mash monsters and vanquish vampires.
......So will Buffy ever be lucky in love and get back with Angel? Probably not, according to Sarah. "I would be terribly upset, but the show doesn't necessarily believe in happy endings, so it probably wouldn't happen anyway. I'm not getting my hopes up."
......Since it began four years ago, Buffy has become a huge hit with teenagers and adults alike, thanks both to it's attractive stars and witty dialogue. Her Vampire series may have been red-carded by TV watchdogs, who deemed it too sexy for younger children, but it has gone on to become a global hit, screened in Britian on both Sky and the BBC.
......Sarah says: "I think that what makes Buffy so real is how much we put into it and how much we believe in it. When I'm standing on that set and that monster is coming at me, it's as real as anything can be at that moment. So real that when I go home, I'm a little shaky and have alot of nightmares."
......The success of the show, however, is a dream come true for Sarah, who was voted the Sexiest Woman on the planet by FHM readers along the way.
......However Sarah says her own schooldays were rather lonelier than Buffy and her gang's: "My junior high school experience wasn't really wonderful. I went to a private school in Manhatten with alot of rich, socialite children where I really didn't fit in. I was an outsider, and it's very difficult to be in a situation like that."
......Her acting work also served to drive the wedge in further between Sarah and her classmates. "I think 'tortured' would be the word you'd be looking for to describe that time, " she admits. "I didn't have any friends in junior high school because I was different."
......Even though she's years away from worrying about her first wrinkle, Sarah is conscious that alot depends on her looks. She enjoys a lucrative contract with Maybelline make-up, advertising products across the world.
......Her alter-ego, Buffy, has always shown plenty of skin in short skirts and sexy tops, and Sarah keeps in trim thanks to grueling workouts with her personal trainer and special calorie-counted meals delivered daily to her film sets.
......However, Buffy's trademark blonde hair is becoming the wolf's bane of Sarah's life. Constant bleaching has left her hair so damaged and brittle that she has to use hair extensions to give her own locks a boost, and she's keen to going back to being a natural brunette at some point.
......"Ive been progressively getting my hair darker," she says. "Two years ago I was much blonder. As Daphne in Scooby-Doo, I wear a red wig and I love it. I may dye my hair that colour when I finish Buffy-just for fun."
......In later years she says she's even prepared to go under the surgeon's knife to hold back the ageing process. "Would I think about getting my eyes done? Absolutely," she declares. "And I've always wanted cheekbones. I even went to the dentist to get my wisdom teeth removed because I heard that it gives you cheekbones and it turned out that they hadn't even come in yet."
......However, she denies that she's already had a nose job and discounts the idea of cheekbone implants, a full face-lift, or boosting Buffy's, ummm, assets through surgery. "I have issues with putting stuff in your body, like collagen in your lips or silicone in your breasts," says Sarah. "Doctors have been doing these surgeries for 40 years now and we haven't even come close to perfecting them, which maybe means we shouldn't be putting things in the body."
......She began acting as a child - one of her first jobs was a beefburger ad. But the New York born actress is best known for her role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. An Emmy winner for her role in the Daytime TV drama All My Children, she has appeared in the films I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream 2, among others.
......She was reported to be unamused when the actress Shannon Elizabeth spoofed her role in I Know What You Did Last Summer. But when Shannon heard that Buffy turned Huffy, she laughed off the idea of a furious confrontation. "I don't mix in the same circles as Sarah," Shannon told me at the time. "But I've heard that she isn't always a very nice person."
......Still, although the real Buffy may be a little spiky, millions of British fans were left gobsmacked after the end of season five. Those fans, that is, who watch the series on Sky TV, rather than BBC2, where season five is just about to start.
......The cheerleading, vampire killing martial arts expert is killed after a swan dive from a 5-story electricity tower. That episode ends with a lingering look at Buffy's gravestone. The tongue-in-cheek tribute reads: