Sarah Michelle Gellar

The lawsuit that started it all

A lawsuit against McDonald's is not the usual start for a five-year-old girl in New York. Sarah Michelle Gellar starred in a Burger King ad in 1981 that directly attacked the competition and ended up in court. That made her the first actress in history to be banned from a fast-food restaurant for advertising reasons.

She was a industry worker before she became a star.

She spent her teenage years on the sets of the soap opera All My Children and in classes on the Upper East Side. In 1995, she won an Emmy for her portrayal of Kendall Hart (a teen villain with tragic undertones) and decided it was time to leave daytime television. But the real change of pace came when she accepted a role in a low-budget series based on a failed movie.

In 1997, Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered on a smaller network called The WB. Nobody expected a story about a cheerleader who fought demons at high school to last seven seasons on the air. Yet the show held up thanks to Gellar's ability to shoot fight scenes for fourteen hours a day while carrying the emotional weight of the dialogue.

Nineties television left no room for rest.

The Price of Constant Exposure

While filming the series, she took advantage of summer breaks to make horror and thriller movies. In 1997, she starred in I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream 2 (two box office hits that each earned more than $100 million). But her role in Cruel Intentions (1999) was what broke her perfect-heroine image with teen audiences.

Her salary for Scooby-Doo in 2002 reached seven million dollars. During that time she married Freddie Prinze Jr., and the media pressure became suffocating for both of them. So after the end of Buffy in 2003, the actress decided she didn't want to keep up the grueling production pace of Los Angeles.

And the bet on silence paid off.

She turned down lead roles in major franchises to focus on independent projects and her family life. In 2011, she tried to return to television with the thriller Ringer, but the CW canceled the series after just one season due to high production costs. It was a hard blow that kept her away from the cameras for another long stretch.

Her comeback on her own terms

In 2015, she founded Foodstirs, an organic baking company that aimed to fill a gap in the children's food market. The company grew exponentially and eventually was sold in more than 8,000 stores across the United States. This business success gave her the financial freedom to turn down any script that landed on her desk.

She returned to the screen by choice, not necessity. In 2023, she took on the role of Kristin Ramsey in the series Wolf Pack for Paramount+, where she also served as executive producer. Her role on set changed dramatically, as she now focuses on protecting young actors from the abuses she witnessed herself in the 1990s.

In 2024, her casting in Dexter: Original Sin was confirmed. She plays Tanya Gerrity (the Miami police chief) in a production set in 1991. The prequel was shot at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles with a technical budget higher than any of her previous TV work.