Sarah Michelle Gellar

Born: April 14th, 1977
Where: New York City

The onetime teen vampire slayer has successfully made the transition to the big screen with the likes of Cruel Intentions and The Grudge.

The only child of a nursery school teacher, Gellar was raised by her mother after her parents divorced. (she was estranged from her father until his death from liver cancer in 2001).

She attended New York's Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School and the Professional Children's School, where she was friends with Sabrina, The Teenage Witch star Melissa Joan Hart.

Spotted by a talent scout in a restaurant, she first appeared on screen aged four in Burger King advert - a decision that led to legal problems.

The 1982 commercial was the first to ever mention a competitor by name and McDonalds sued Gellar as well as Burger King.

It meant she couldn't enter a McDonald's unless she was in disguise due to truth in advertising ("I only eat at Burger King" was one of her lines in the commercial).

Fast food joint decisions behind her, she made her big screen debut at the age of seven in in Over The Brooklyn Bridge.

In 1989, she landed a more substantial role in the thriller High Stakes and then landed her keynote role of Buffy in the TV series Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

At the same time she was cast in the teen slasher classic I Know What You Did Last Summer and followed this with similar fare in Scream 2.

In 1999, she starred in the romantic comedy Simply Irresistible and joined Ryan Philippe and Alicia Silverstone in the thriller Cruel Intentions.

The thriller Harvard Man is best forgotten about but Gellar landed the role of Daphne opposite husband-to-be Freddie Prinze Jr in the Scooby Doo series.

In 2004, she appeared in the Japanese horror-thriller The Grudge, directed by Takashi Shimizu, and followed that with Southland Tales with Jason Lee and Janeane Garofolo in 2006.

The same year she returned for the sequel The Grudge 2 and recent work includes the dark thriller The Return.