Sarah Michelle Gellar
Intervista

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INTERVISTA A SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR SUL SUONUOVO FILM "SCOOBY DOO" TROVATA L' 11 APRILE 2002 SUL SITO www.IMDb.com

One of the many nice things to report about Sarah Michelle Gellar is that she's probably one of the friendliest people around. And when it comes to the entertainment industry, that's saying a lot. Gellar is also very smart and savvy when it comes to her work, and she brings a definite intelligence and sophistication to her performances. That's very likely the main reason audiences have been drawn to her as Buffy (aka: the Vampire Killer) for the last four years. But Gellar is setting her sights beyond her battles against the forces of darkness and looking to establish herself as a big-league film actress.

Scooby Doo is her next film to hit the screens this summer and it's already being hyped as one of the year's blockbusters. After all, it does co-star Gellar's fiancé Freddie Prinze Jr., the impossibly handsome actor who is also looking for a solid hit, and it does cash in on the cartoon series that has been a cult favourite for twenty years. How does Sarah see the film as part of her career plan?

"For me, Scooby Doo was a chance to do something fun for a change, " explains Gellar. "I had a chance to spend a few months in Sydney, Australia which is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and I was working with the man in my life Freddie Prinze Jr). So I wasn't even looking at it from any career management perspective even though it certainly has the potential to draw a huge audience. Playing Daphne was also a chance for me to do comedy and take a break from my more serious Buffy frame of mind."

Audiences will also be looking for Gellar in the upcoming indie satire, Harvard Man, directed by James Toback, in which Sarah plays a sexually-aggressive and somewhat manipulative college girl. Though the film has little commercial prospects, it's important to Gellar that she maintain a balance between outwardly popular fare like Scooby Doo and the serious dramas that are more to her personal tastes. Remember, this is a young woman who was brought up in Manhattan under fairly exclusive circumstances, and while starring as Susan Lucci's daughter in All My Children, Gellar became a fervent admirer of the arts and longs to do important work.

THE INTERVEW

You've been keeping your romance with Freddie Prinze Jr. fairly quiet of late. Is that part of a anti-paparazzi strategy?

More or less. We both like to spend quiet time together and because I have a pretty heavy shooting schedule with Buffy that doesn't always make it easy for us to just relax together. So we're trying to enjoy our relationship as free from any media stress as possible. So far we haven't had too much difficulty staying out of the headlines. We're happy together and not really worrying about how much attention our relationship gets.

Do you ever find it tough to focus on your relationship when you can't just go out and be a normal couple because of fans constantly coming up to you?

Sometimes you'd prefer to enjoy some anonymity, and a lot of the times
no one ever disturbs us if we're at a cafe or restaurant together. Most people are very respectful and we appreciate that. Of course, being in this business means that people fall in love with characters and want to have some contact with you, and that's fine too. It's more the press that can be a problem when a lot of lies get printed. We haven't seen too much of that and that's why we're trying to be as low profile as possible and just block out everything that has nothing to do with who we are and our happiness together. It's tough enough maintaining any sort of relationship without also having to worry about your image. So we just try to stay true to who we are and to ourselves.

Is Scooby Doo a film that showcases a different side of you in the sense that playing Daphne is such a departure from Buffy?

Absolutely. Daphne is just so out there and bold and kind of outrageous with her short skirts and these wild outfits. She has a self-confident streak that I've never had in my own life, so it was empowering in a way for me to put myself in her designer shoes. But to get to your question, what's interesting about doing a comedy like Scooby is this sense of charming innocence that comes with the characters.

How does making a comedy like Scooby Doo compare to doing Buffy?

Doing a series like Buffy is hard work. It's physically demanding on your energy and on your time because you work from morning until 8 or 9 in the evening. And it's also psychologically taxing because you have to put yourself into the head of this girl who is constantly being threatened and trying to define some kind of identity and life for herself. That might sound silly, but Buffy has a lot of fine edges and I think that's why people appreciate her and her struggle... So doing Scooby Doo was one of the best things I've ever done in my life. It was a pure joy and a really great personal experience for me. I loved spending time in Sydney and getting to know as many people there as I could. Australians have a wonderful spirit and sense of themselves and it rubs off on you.

You're a native New Yorker. How have you been affected by the events of Sept. 11th?

It's been hard and kind of frightening. I think that people have been through a lot the last year after Sept. 11, and it was a time when a lot of people, especially New Yorkers like myself, went through a lot of self-questioning and agonizing because of the helplessness you feel in the face of such an event. But the positive side of that tragedy is that it's also brought people together in many different ways. There's a greater sense of shared spirit and the feeling that we've got to pull together during these times. It also makes you focus on more important things in life because you realize that life is precious and you shouldn't be wasting time on frivolous or superficial things.

You've expressed you desire to concentrate on your film career. Does that mean you're going to be leaving Buffy sooner rather than later?

I don't know how long Buffy will stay on the air. This year we went to UPN and left WB which had nurtured the series and a lot of us were worried about how that would affect the show. But everything has turned out fine and I'm very happy with how they've treated us and given their support of the series. We're definitely going to do one more season according to our contract and then we're all going to take a look at where we stand. I certainly haven't made up my mind one way or the other what I'm going to do. I enjoy the work and I think the story lines have become more and more interesting, and that's the most important thing for me - to make sure we aren't repeating ourselves and allowing Buffy and the other characters to evolve in serious ways that most series never allow. That's why I'm quite proud of Buffy and what we've achieved.

Are you very ambitious in life?

I think so, even though it's been hard for me at times to be as fearless as I would like to be in pursuing my goals in life. Since I spent my adolescence as a working actress, I was isolated in many ways from a lot of the other kids I would meet at school and sometimes I was made to feel very strange and not very secure by that experience. So it's taken me time to get to the point where I'm much more relaxed about who I am, what I want from life, and not worrying about extraneous things. Even though I was very successful as a teenager and earning a lot of money, I never felt cool or very comfortable in my own skin.

What changed you?

Actually, getting the part of Buffy and bringing her to life and making the series work has been a big part of my evolution. Because the character is so different from what you see on TV and the series has always tried to establish different layers in her personality, I honestly feel that I've grown up with Buffy as my alter ego. We've both become more self-confident and assertive and aware of our goals. My life as Buffy has many parallels with my own personal development and my own sense of self-worth. People who have that kind of natural self-confidence have no idea how hard it is sometimes for other people, who don't have it, to put themselves into a mind frame where they can enjoy the feeling that comes with not doubting yourself.

Do you feel freer and more at ease in life in general now?

Oh, yes. Obviously a lot of that comes simply from growing up and getting out in the world more. When you're working a lot as a teenager you're obviously living in a kind of self-contained environment and you experience the world differently from other kids. I think I grew up very fast, maybe too fast, in the sense that I had a much more adult perspective in life when it came to feeling more pressure about success and responsibility. Acting has basically been my entire life and I didn't have an easy time growing up at all. So I've had to work a bit harder to regain some of the free-spiritedness that I had lost.

Have you ever felt that you were growing stale in the Buffy role?

No. And that's because there's always been a lot of attention paid to developing her character and sustaining a series of new levels and edges to the kinds of things she's experiencing. We have tried to treat her situation as seriously as possible even though obviously she's living in a very surreal world. But we've tried to take her specific context and the vampires and turn it into a more general struggle against a lot of the problems and obstacles that young people face all the time in their lives. We have always been very conscious of our audience and trying to make Buffy and the other characters as valid as possible. We've never tried to be patronizing or to deliberately exploit the situations. I'd like to think that Buffy represents a lot of young women out there trying to find her way through life.

You're enjoying success on many levels in film and TV and now in your personal life in your relationship with Freddie Prinze Jr. Do you feel that things have come together for you?

I'm beginning to get that sense about life. I've had an incredible opportunity to be part of a high-quality and successful series like Buffy, but I still want to prove myself in films. I was very happy to have had a chance to be in both commercial and more serious-minded projects, and I would like to continue to enjoy that freedom. I also like feeling that most of my life is ahead of me and that my best work is ahead of me. It's an exciting place to be.

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