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To Die For
Sarah Michelle Gellar is sure she's the luckiest girl on the planet. "I've been so blessed," she says. "I should pinch myself." Her success she says, "is something I've worked my whole life for."
And her blessings have been well worth the wait. With talent, intelligence, and 5 feet, 3 inches of delicate, green-eyed beauty, Sarah has developed a stronghold on the entertainment world. She is a goddess of both the small and the big screen and has the humility to be grateful for her opportunities. But what really makes Sarah a screaming success is pure, self-motivated, driven hard work. You don't keep the world safe from vampires all television season long and then thrill big-screen audiences half to death in two movies over your summer vacation unless you can work like, well, a demon.
As the pretty, petite Slayer with the high kick and perfect aim on the WB network's series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sarah sometimes shoots until two in the morning and is back on the set at five. That's A.M. -- when most of us are only dreaming of saving the world. Immediately after the first season of Buffy wrapped, Sarah packed her bags and flew down to North Carolina. No, not for a week on the beach, though she certainly deserved it. As soon as she arrived she went right to work on I Know What You Did Last Summer. Then, the day after her Summer was over, she went to Atlanta and began shooting Scream 2. "I didn't sleep at home for even one night during the Buffy hiatus," Sarah says.
Not that she'd want it any other way. She's having the time of her life. She has fashioned Buffy not as the campy, cartoonish character from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie but as a complex young woman who's become a real role model. Buffy is strong, powerful, and very much her own person but at the same time vulnerable and human -- kind of like Sarah herself. Her movie roles have presented challenging opportunities, too, affording the chance "to do drama, to do horror, to do action, to do comedy. That's an actor's dream," Sarah says.
The folks in charge are as happy with her work as she is. "She's rocking," says I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson. "I didn't have to push her hard. Wes Craven [Scream 2's director] fell in love with her, too. I want her in every one of my movies." Sarah's legion of fans certainly wouldn't mind that.
But the stardom that has come from all that hard work doesn't seem to have gone to Sarah's head at all. She's not too famous to shop for presents for her two best friends from home, Ashlee and Brittany, when she's away on location. And she took the time to sit by fellow Buffy star Alyson Hannigan's hospital bed as Alyson recovered from a tonsillectomy. Once she even made a few calls to ensure that the journalist who was interviewing her got the best possible airline seat. Sarah has proven again and again that she's not too cool to care.
Sarah's intensely private about her personal life. Don't ask her too much about her family or who she's seeing. But she and Alyson still made time to chat with two young fans they met at a local mall during a Buffy break, and you can find her on-line, graciously fielding questions from some serious cyber-Saraholics.
And get this: Last time anyone asked, she still didn't even have a housekeeper. It seems the Slayer can spend the day kick boxing evil spirits right back down where they belong, squeeze in a couple of talk show appearances, and still have time to vacuum under her bed.
How does she stay so real and so down-to-earth and still manage to get an almost supernatural amount done? We know she doesn't have Buffy's superhero powers. Maybe she just fits it all in because she never takes time out to sleep. She's having too much fun doing exactly what she has always wanted to do. "I'm twenty years old. I'm supposed to pull allnighters," Sarah says. And then, with her characteristic dry sense of humor, she tells you, "I can sleep when I'm dead."
Except you get the feeling that even then, she'd manage to make a movie or two that would keep audiences on the edge of their seats...and be modest and gracious about it.
Text copyright © 1998 by 17th Street Productions
