A petite, soulful-eyed, young actress who went from playing the daughter Erica Kane bore after a rape on ABC’s “All My Children” to being “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (The WB, 1997-2001; UPN, 2001- ), Sarah Michelle Gellar earned a Daytime Emmy Award (for “All My Children”) before she was old enough to legally order the celebratory champagne. Acting from age four, she made her professional debut as Valerie Harper’s daughter in the 1983 CBS TV-movie “An Invasion of Privacy”. The next year, the brunette could be seen in a small role in the big screen “Over the Brooklyn Bridge”, which starred Elliot Gould. Billed as Sarah Gellar, she also appeared in the feature “High Stakes” (1989). In the early 90s, she was in the pre-Broadway production of Neil Simon’s “Jake’s Woman” and played supported Matthew Broderick (then Eric Stoltz) in the Off-Broadway production of Horton Foote’s “The Widow Claire”.
Her TV career also began in earnest in the 90s. Gellar played the young Jacqueline Bouvier in the NBC miniseries “A Woman Named Jackie” in 1991, and was one of the adolescents in a small wealthy suburb on the short-lived syndicated soap opera “Swan’s Crossing” (1992). For two years (1993-1995), she played the role of the scheming Kendall Hart on ABC’s “All My Children”. Her character was supposed to be the child born to Erica Kane (Susan Lucci) after a teen-age rape who arrived in town determined to make Erica pay dearly for having given her up for adoption at birth. Gellar was twice-nominated for an Emmy and shortly after winning in 1995, it was announced she would be leaving the show. Rumors swirled about the young actress and her relationship with the veteran Lucci. (Gellar was quoted by TV GUIDE as saying “We didn’t have a perfect working relationship.”)
