........There are more than two million vegetarian ladies in the United Kingdom and most are easy to spot by the wind chimes and African tribal masks cluttering up their flat, the energy crystal around their neck and their refusal to prune their unruly thatch of underarm hair. However, many are more devious and the first indication that they think "meat is murder" will be when you site down for Sunday Lunch, only to be confronted by a meal which the main ingredient appears to be twigs. Thankfully for the hamburger-scoffing man, 23-year old Sarah Michelle Gellar, star of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, isn't one of them. "I'm well known for my barbecues," says Sarah. "I'm a meat eater, I'm really carnivorous. A little steak never hurt anybody."
........Food has indeed played a big part in Sarah's career, she was discovered by an agent in a Manhattan restaurant at the age of four and one of her first jobs was a TV advertisement for Burger King - which made the wee nipper Public Enemy Number One of the McDonald's corporation, as the ad knocked the size of their burgers and ended up with the two superpowers of the fast food industry slugging it out in court. "I remember a friend had a birthday party at McDonalds," she says. "Because of the legal case I didn'tthink I was allowed to eat there. So I put on a hat and sunglasses and only had a soda."
........Despite that hiccup, Sarah's acting career took off when she won the role of Kendal Hart in daytime soap All My Children - in 1993 winning the Best Younger Actress Emmy. But she found her first week on the show something of a steep learning curve. "I locked my little sister in a crypt. Then I burned my parents' divorce papers and tried to seduce my stepfather. When he turned me down, I slept with the stable boy and then cried rape and went to jail."
........The day after winning her award, she announced she was to quit. But this didn't mean sitting at home with her feet up, gloating on her success, as Sarah is a self-confessed workaholic, regularly working a fifteen-hour day - "I can sleep when I'm dead" - and landed the role of Buffy, although she originally auditioned for the part of airhead Cordelia. Just like the 1992 movie it was based on (starring Kristy Swanson and Beverly Hill 90210's Luke Perry) Buffy the Vampire Slayer wasn't an overnight success - in its first season in the US it was ranked 100 out of 107 shows - but now the likes of Finland, Holland, Sweden and Romania are familiar with the troubled school life of Buffy Summers as she juggles a vampire boyfriend, denizens of the underworld feasting on students and most importantly, getting the right grades in math.
........Sarah has also been forging an impressive movie career appearing in horror flicks I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream 2, the romantic comedy Simply Irresistible and Cruel Intentions, in which she and co-star Selma Blair performed a lengthy lesbian smooch. The kiss lived for so long in the memory it scooped the award for "Best Kiss" at this years MTV's Golden Popcorn Awards. The next movies Sarah has squeezed into her hiatus from filming Buffy is the drama Harvard Man and the thriller The It Girl, both slated for a 2001 release.
........With the success of Buffy and her movie career, Sarah's life has dramatically changed, but refreshingly, fame isn't something she has just taken for granted. "There's no question I live a very strange life," she said last year, after journeying to the Dominican Republic to help the charity Habitat for Humanity build accommodation for the homeless. "I've just come from two weeks in New York, hosting Saturday Night Live, living the princess's dream - I had a car to whisk me wherever I wanted to go."

........We've heard there's a Buffy drinking game whereevery time you catch a cheeky glimpse of Buffy's bra strap you have to down a drink.
"Yeah, in the first season they always made me wear tank tops. I was about 15 pounds heavier and a full cup size bigger and I wasn't going to wear tops without a bra, so you always saw the straps. I was thinking, 'Great, I'm adding to the drunk rate in America.' But for the second season I discovered strapless bras and it ruined the whole game."
........There must be hundreds of disappointed teenage boys across America craving for a peek of your bra strap. They'll have to think up something else.
"Or I'll get a boob job, one of the two."
........In Buffy your mentor is played by Anthony Stewart Head who's more famous in the UK as the guy from the soppy Gold Blend adverts.
"It's also a very famous advert in the US, so when I was auditioning I was sitting next to him and I was like, 'Oh my God I've got the coffee guy sitting next to me.' But the ending was never shown in the US so we never found out what finally happened."
........You studied streetfighting. Does that mean you're tasty with your fists?
"No, it just means hand-to-hand fighting. I studied tae kwon do and now I'm learning kickboxing and gymnastics. I can probably look after myself if somebody attacked my, I hope I would never be in the situation where I'd need to - I carry Mace for that."
........In Cruel Intentions you played a real bitch...were you treated like that when you were at school?
"Oh yeah I grew up in New York City, so I knew them all. I was an outcast in Junior High School. I was an academic and working all the time and that made me different from everyone else. They basically didn't talk to me, I had two friends and that was it. I hated it."
........Were you a rebellious teenager?
"I was a partier at high school, I explored when it was OK to do so. Can you imagine if I had my wild phase now - everyone would know about it."
........You went to your first club at 15. Did you have to get permission from your mum?
"Actually I was probably a bit younger and no, I didn't have to sneak out of the house - my mum didn't mind as long as I did things safely. I wanted to see what the inside of The Limelight was like, and taste my first drink. It's not in my nature to do stupid things. I mean I have done stupid things."
........What sort of stupid things?
"Like you think I'm going to let you guys put that in print?"
........You drive a big red Land Rover. Have you ever gone off-roading?
"They have this thing in LA where you go up to the mountains and they show you how to do it, but I haven't had a Saturday off to go yet. But I read the funniest thing about my car - I was in a supermarket with my friends and they picked up a magazine and it said, 'Sarah Gellar has just bought her first car, but she's afraid it will get dirty.' Can you imagine? How ridiculous is that? My car gets a lot of birthday gifts; I got a hands-free adapter for my phone and a police radar."
........So have you been stopped by the cops?
"Yes but not for speeding. I was stopped for having tinted windows, which is illegal in LA."
........We got a lot of readers writing in, depressed because they're losing their hair. Do you find bald men sexy?
"Oh yeah, I was talking to a friend of mine who's convinced he's going bald, and I was joking about his receding hairline. I told him there were lots of sexy bald guys out there. He was like, 'Name one' and I said, 'Telly Savalas.' He didn't speak to me for two weeks. But I love guys with shaved heads, I think Bruce Willis is real sexy. I'd date a bald man, I like it when their hair comes back a little bit and you can feel the stubble on the back of their heads."
........We've noticed that you've got tattoos.
"Yeah, I have a Chinese symbol for integrity on my back, and one on my ankle which is a heart and a knife. I find tattoo's addictive - I want to put a chain around one of my ankles. I'm not worried about scarring my body, if I don't like them when I'm older I'll just get rid of them. My stunt double had to have hers removed from her arm because I don't have one there."
........Last year you were voted FHM's 100 Sexiest Woman In The World. Did it change your life?
"It's an honour, but they obviously don't know me. They obviously don't see me first thing in the morning, before people come to fix my face and hair. It's so weird, People Magazine published their 50 Most Beautiful Women In The World when we were filming Cruel Intentions and my co-star Ryan Phillipe teased me unmercifully: it was like, "Oh let's do what one of the most beautiful women in the world wants to do."