Sarah
Michelle Gellar
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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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