Trivia: The 5' 3," sandy blonde-haired Gen-Y icon Sarah Michelle Gellar's life story reads like a preteen wish fulfillment fantasy. Born in Manhattan in 1977 and discovered by an agent in a Manhattan restaurant at the age of four, Gellar signed for her first role (in the 1983 telemovie An Invasion of Privacy) not one week later. A plethora of bit parts in television series (Spenser: For Hire) and theatrical films (Over the Brooklyn Bridge, 1984; Funny Farm, 1988; High Stakes, 1989) followed, before Gellar landed a recurring role, in the early '90s, on the decades-long daytime soap opera All My Children. Throughout the early years of her career, Gellar was managed and supervised by her mother, a former nursery school teacher who insisted on straight A's as a prerequisite of an acting career. Sarah Michelle delivered, time and again.Despite the apparent fairy tale-like quality of her rise, Gellar reportedly battled several decidedly unhappy experiences as a child, including a parental divorce, decades of estrangement from her father, and social struggles in a New York City high school, experiences parlayed into her first (and most infamous) lead: that of Buffy, a California valley girl high school student-turned-"exterminator of the undead" in the early-'90s syndicated cult fantasy series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Gellar inherited the role from Kristy Swanson, who fleshed it out in the (decidedly more comic) 1992 theatrical release of the same name. Under Gellar's aegis, the show lasted seven years, from 1996 through 2003, and it became a massive international hit, garnering legions of fans. The subject matter of the series required the young actress to engage in rigorous exercise and physical training off-camera throughout Buffy's run.Gellar (a compulsive shopper and brand aficionado off-camera) then signed as a Maybelline spokeswoman and prepared to move into the third phase of her acting career. As Buffy wrapped, it coincided with the resurgence of American teen horror films led by Wes Craven's Scream series, and although Gellar did not join the cast of the first installment, her popularity on Buffy the Vampire Slayer thematically paved the way for involvement in one Scream sequel and one emulator: Scream 2 and I Know What You Did Last Summer (both 1997). In 1999, Gellar teamed up with two other notables of the same generation, Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe, for the Dangerous Liaisons teen update Cruel Intentions. As Kathryn Merteuil -- the depraved schemer who coaxes her stepbrother (Phillippe) into deflowering the school headmaster's daughter (Witherspoon), and thus inadvertently sets in motion a chain of disasters that will destroy them all -- Gellar played off of her wholesome, "all-American girl" image and helped turn the picture into a minor hit. Meanwhile, Gellar met and fell in love with Hollywood heartthrob Freddie Prinze Jr. (the son of the ill-fated, late-'70s Hispanic comedian Freddie Prinze), and the two married in Mexico in 2002, the same year they co-starred as Fred and Daphne for director Raja Gosnell in the live-action summer blockbuster Scooby-Doo. Two years later, Gellar and Prinze took the wheel of the Mystery Machine to fight a mischievous specter in 2004's Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. Gellar (long a student and admirer of Japanese culture) then traveled to Japan to do battle with some truly frightening entities in the 2004 J-horror remake The Grudge. In that effort, she plays an American student employed at a Japanese health center who uncovers a centuries-old curse that feeds off of anger and guides one victim after another into an unquenchable, violent rage.Subsequent vocal work on the animated cult hit Robot Chicken found the former vampire slayer having a bit of behind-the-scenes fun without the stress of appearing before the camera, and a role as an ambitious porn star teetering on the edge of the apocalypse in director Richard Kelly's eagerly anticipated Donnie Darko follow-up, Southland Tales, preceded a trip back into terror as a successful business woman haunted by a decades-old murder in the 2006 supernatural thriller The Return. In that picture, Gellar plays Joanna Mills, a thick-skinned, courageous Midwestern girl plagued by haunting supernatural visions, who attempts to uncover the origin of these specters. Unfortunately, that film opened to horrendous critical reviews and lackluster box office numbers in November 2006, appearing and disappearing quickly.Gellar would do plenty of voice acting in movies like the family-friendly CG-animated fairy tale Happily N'Ever After and the Weinstein-produced, CG-animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Gellar would ultimately find continued success in TV, however, lending her voice to the animated sketch comedy series Robot Chicken, and her role on the series Ringer.

Trivia: Legions of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans know Nicholas Brendon as the goofy but loyal character Xander, which he played for seven seasons between 1997 and 2003. Born in Los Angeles in 1971, Brendon was surrounded by the bright lights of Hollywood from the womb, but unlike a lot of hopeful stars, he didn't dive into show business as a child. Brendon's first love was baseball, and he had aspirations to pursue a career in sports until an injury forced him to change his plans. Addled with a stuttering problem that had plagued him from a young age, he tried his hand at acting at the age of 20 as a way to overcome his problem. The method worked, both curing his stuttering and offering him an avenue for career success -- eventually.Brendon's first shot at acting ended after two years, with Brendon frustrated by the shallow politics of Hollywood. He subsequently tried his hand as a janitor, daycare counselor, plumber's assistant, waiter, and even medical school student before giving acting another chance. After less than a week of auditions, he landed the role of Xander.After Buffy ended in 2003, Brendon followed the show with a starring role in the series Kitchen Confidential. Though the show was canceled after just one season in 2006, the actor had no shortage of projects lined up, soon working on both sides of the camera by producing and starring in the 2007 horror film Unholy. A short time later, he appeared in the horror comedy Blood on the Highway before assuming a recurring role on the procedural crime drama Criminal Minds. In 2009 he had a main role in the family-friendly A Golden Christmas. He had a terrifying arc on Private Practice, playing a rapist, in 2011.

Trivia: Born March 24, 1974, in Washington, D.C., Hannigan became a TV commercial veteran following her family's move to Atlanta. From the age of four, Hannigan appeared in a steady stream of commercials, including ones for Oreo and McDonald's. At the age of 11, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in film and television. She made her big-screen debut in the 1988 film My Stepmother Is an Alien, as Dan Aykroyd's daughter. The following year, she won a regular spot on the short-lived sitcom Free Spirit and acted in a variety of television miniseries and sitcoms (including Roseanne and Picket Fences) until 1997, when she won the part of Willow on Buffy.The show proved to be an unexpected success among critics and viewers alike, and paved the way for Hannigan to appear opposite Tom Everett Scott in the 1998 comedy Dead Man on Campus. American Pie followed the next year, giving Hannigan wider recognition and making her an unintentional poster child for band camps everywhere. She would return for sequels in the franchise, but Hannigan would also become just as well known for her subsuquent role on the popular sitcom How I Met Your Mother.

Trivia: Anthony Head (often credited by his full name, Anthony Stewart Head) became most widely recognized in the U.S. for his role on the WB prime-time drama series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar. However, on his British home-front, he is perhaps more well known for his recurring role in the dramatic Taster's Choice commercials. Wherever he is, his abundant credits both on television and on-stage have earned him notice as a talented performer.Head was born February 20, 1954, in Camden, London, England. The son of an actress mother, and documentary-filmmaker father, show business was in his blood. At an early age, his interest in the field his parents had pursued was already apparent, and would also be reflected in his brother Murray Head's acting career. Anthony Head started acting in school plays at the age of six, and was writing his own within just a few years. After high school, he attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, where he studied until 1976. He began a long-term relationship with Sarah Fisher, ten years his junior, in 1982. The couple had two daughters, Emily Rose (1989) and Daisy May (1991).In addition to decades of theatrical experience in Britain, Head has earned recognition to mass audiences with his roles on television. His first TV role came in 1978 with the British series Enemy at the Door, a World War II drama (which would perhaps go on to inspire the name of the 2001 film Enemy at the Gates). That same year he appeared on a miniseries called Lillie. After a lengthy focus on his career in theater and smaller television appearances, Head returned to starring dramatic TV roles with Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 1997. On the program, he portrayed Rupert Giles, the mentor to Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), who followed her in disguise as the school librarian, in order to be on guard against evil powers. The character provoked a spin-off to the original series that features Rupert "Ripper" Giles as a "watcher," who returns to England after watching Buffy. Entitled Ripper, the program began its run in 2002. Also that year, Head played the role of James on the TV series Manchild. He was in the cast of Little Britain and appeared in a variety of projects including Imagine Me & You, Sparkle, and Amelia and Michael. In 2008 he landed a recurring role on the series Merlin playing King Uther, and that same year he appeared in the big-screen musical Repo! The Genetic Opera. In 2011 he appeared in the Oscar winning drama The Iron Lady, and he had a small part in the 2012 sequel Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.

Trivia: Look up the words "handsome" and "brooding" in any dictionary and chances are you'll have a pretty good description of actor David Boreanaz. Tall, dark, and possessing the sort of alluring charisma that suggests an Abercrombie and Fitch model from the dark side, Boreanaz flourished on the small screen in the early 2000s when his Buffy the Vampire Slayer role was spun off into the supernatural-flavored series Angel.Born in Buffalo, NY, and raised in Philadelphia, Boreanaz was inspired at age seven to pursue a career in acting after witnessing the legendary Yul Brynner's performance in The King and I. In the years that followed, the aspiring actor would strive to keep the dream alive, and when it came time for higher education, Boreanaz opted to study his craft at Ithaca College in New York. The allure of a life in films soon drew Boreanaz to Los Angeles, although it wouldn't take him long to realize that struggling actors were a dime a dozen in sunny California. Dreams of his name in lights soon gave way to realities such as earning a living by parking cars and handing out towels at a sports club -- and uncredited parts in such films as Aspen Extreme and Best of the Best 2 (both 1993) certainly weren't paying the rent. A one-time role on Married...With Children as daughter Kelly's (Christina Applegate) motorcycle-riding boyfriend gained the struggling actor modest exposure -- and his luck would soon change in the most unexpected (though somewhat typical by Hollywood standards) way. While Boreanaz was walking his dog in Hollywood, a manager was taken by his captivating intensity, and a subsequent introduction to casting agent Marcia Shulman almost immediately ensured his landing the role of the vampire Angel on the soon-to-be-hit series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Two years after the premiere of Buffy, Boreanaz's character proved popular enough to earn his own eponymously titled spin-off series, and the show proved a solid hit for the WB until it was inexplicably canceled in mid-2004. Of course, by this point, Boreanaz could rest fairly easy thanks to roles in such features as Valentine (2001) and I'm With Lucy (2002). Fans who couldn't get enough of the actor's dark side could look forward to his role as the villainous Luc Crash in The Crow: Wicked Prayer (2004).Soon however, Boreanaz found another compelling small-screen role, playing Special Agent Seeley Booth on the hit detective series Bones.

Trivia: An actress who enjoyed fame and recognition as the on-camera mother of Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar), on the action-horror series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1996-2003), Kristine Sutherland grew up in Lexington, KY, and first explored her capacity for effective drama via stage work. She first began appearing in A-list feature films in the mid- to late '80s, with projects including Legal Eagles (1986) and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989), but her career caught fire with the role of Joyce Summers on Buffy, and her portrayal prompted at least one major publication to term her "Television's Sexiest Mom." After she exited the program in 2002, Sutherland decided to attend a still photography course at Santa Monica College upon feeling inspired by a year-long residence in Italy with her husband and daughter. She so enjoyed the course -- and the art of taking photographs -- that it encouraged her to open up her own studio, with an emphasis on portraiture. She also occasionally still appeared on television; in 2008, she played Elmira Forsythe in the Western miniseries Comanche Moon and took on a guest role on the series New Amsterdam.

Trivia: As Oz, the guitarist with a bit of a werewolf problem on the WB's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, actor Seth Green became known and loved by television viewers from the U.S. to Australia. What isn't as well-known to many of these viewers is the fact that Green has been acting in films and on television since 1984, when he made his debut as Egg, the little brother of Jodie Foster and Rob Lowe in The Hotel New Hampshire. A native of Philadelphia, Green was born February 8, 1974, and raised in the suburbs by his artist mother and math-teacher father. Although unbeknownst to him at the time, his first onscreen stint was as a newborn in a natural childbirth video. Green's more conscious interest in acting began at the age of six, when he had his first role in a summer camp play. With the help of his uncle, who was a casting director, Green was soon appearing in commercials and on various television shows. Getting his first real break with 1984's The Hotel New Hampshire, the young actor spent the next few years appearing in television shows before landing his first starring role in Woody Allen's 1987 film Radio Days. As Allen's young alter-ego, Green won a respectable amount of recognition (including an appearance on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show) for his part in the nostalgic tale of a boy growing up as part of an eccentric family in 1940s America. The role led to work in various films, such as Can't Buy Me Love (1987) and the following year's My Stepmother Is an Alien (in which he co-starred with his future Buffy love interest Alyson Hannigan). The early '90s were not kind to Green, who found himself acting in a series of bad films and winning only small parts on the occasional television show, including The Wonder Years. In fact, if audiences recognized the actor at all, it was probably due to a series of Rally's commercials that featured him as the obnoxious fast-food worker who made "Cha-ching" part of the national lexicon for about three months. Things finally began to pick up in 1997, when Green won his substantial role on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Coincidentally, he had been cast five years earlier in the original film incarnation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but his scenes had ended up on the cutting-room floor. Green found further success in 1997, when he landed a memorable supporting role as the son of Dr. Evil in the sleeper hit Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Suddenly once again in favor with Hollywood's Powers That Be, Green appeared the following year in the Jennifer Love Hewitt film Can't Hardly Wait and in 1999 reprised his role as Scott Evil in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Also in 1999, the actor landed a starring role as Devon Sawa's zombie friend in Idle Hands. The film, which was about a teen with murderous hands, had the unfortunate luck of opening a week after the Columbine High School shootings and quickly disappeared without a trace. However, this didn't seem to do substantial damage to the red-headed actor's career, as he continued riding high with his role on Buffy. Green also kept busy doing the voice of Chris Griffin on Fox's animated series The Family Guy, which he would stick with for over ten years. The turnover to the new millennium found Green increasingly popular on the big screen, with roles in such films as Rat Race and America's Sweethearts (both 2001). It wasn't long before the inevitable third chapter in the adventures of Austin Powers was to go before the cameras, and Green once again agreed to fill the shoes of Scott Evil.Green would spend the following several years appering in a number of filims, like The Italian Job, Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, Sex Drive, Old Dogs, and Mars Needs Moms. Green would also nurture a career as a writer and producer with animated comedy series like Robot Chicken and Titan Maximum.

Trivia: Though Charisma Carpenter refers to her first name as an "absolute curse" (it was derived from an ill-conceived Avon perfume line), it certainly hasn't proved detrimental to her career. Born in Las Vegas, NV, Carpenter had exhibited an interest in the performing arts by the age of five, when she began studying classical ballet. Though her family moved to Mexico in 1985, the fast-paced, entertainment-laden Las Vegas atmosphere had already had a profound effect on a then 15-year-old Charisma -- so much so that she embarked on an hour-long, daily commute to San Diego, where she attended the prestigious School of the Performing Arts.Carpenter had somewhat drastically changed her career plans after her graduation, when she moved to San Diego and took on a series of odd jobs, ranging from a video clerk to a member of the San Diego Chargers' cheerleading squad, in hopes of funding a college education. The non-aspiring actress was hoping to become an English teacher. To the eventual delight of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans nationwide, however, this wasn't to be. While waiting tables on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, Carpenter was discovered by a commercial agent who promptly recommended she continue attending acting school. Her penchant for show business piqued once again, Carpenter decided to test her chops at the reputable Playhouse West, where she spent 18 months honing her skills. While there, Carpenter appeared in series of commercials, though her first true television role wouldn't occur until much later, in 1995, when she made a guest appearance on Baywatch.Seven long years after dedicating herself to acting, Carpenter managed to land a starring role on prime-time soap guru Aaron Spelling's Malibu Shores opposite Keri Russell. The show, however, was short-lived, and Carpenter was once again left with no solid job of which to speak, despite sporadic appearances on Boy Meets World and Pacific Blue. In 1997, Carpenter's agent found the then very much aspiring actress two separate auditions for a role the same show: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a teen-oriented horror comedy series based on 1992's much less successful movie of the same name. One of the auditions was for Buffy, the intrepid vampire slayer, while the other was for Cordelia Chase, snooty high school student extraordinaire. As fate would have it, Sarah Michelle Gellar would win the part of Buffy, while Carpenter would ignite many an Internet fan site as Cordelia. So popular was her role that in 1999, when the Buffy spin-off Angel was launched, Carpenter was able to continue and expand the role.Though the series couldn't last forever, Carpenter continued to act after its cancellation. In 2004, she starred in What Boys Like, a sex comedy directed by Lawrence Gay, and played a reoccurring role in NBC's short-lived Alicia Silverstone vehicle Miss Match. Carpenter remained active the mid-2000s, and continued to find success playing characters with some sort of supernatural ability (as indicated by her appearances on the television shows Charmed and Supernatural). The actress played the girlfriend of a mercenary (Jason Statham) in 2010's The Expendables, and reprised the role for The Expendables 2 (2012). Off screen, Carpenter enjoys a variety of outdoor activities -- rock climbing, horseback riding, biking, and rollerblading, to name a few -- and spending time with her son.