How Sarah Michelle Gellar Achieved a Net Worth of $30 Million

Sarah Michelle Prinze née Gellar is an American actress who was most famous in the 1990s and 2000s. She became a mother in the late 2000s. Since then, she has been much less active as an actress. However, Gellar still acts from time to time, as shown by her recent voice acting role as Teela on Masters of the Universe: Revelation. Furthermore, it is interesting to note that she is now a producer as well as an entrepreneur.

What Is Sarah Michelle Gellar's Net Worth?

It is no exaggeration to say that Gellar was very successful when she was still very active as an actress. For proof, consider the estimate that she has a net worth of $30 million. Of course, estimates are estimates, meaning that the real number is bound to be something else. Still, it is enough to provide interested individuals with a general sense of things.

How Did Sarah Michelle Gellar Reach Her Net Worth?

Background-wise, Gellar was born on Long Island to a nursery school teacher named Rosellen née Greenfield and a garment worker named Arthur Gellar. Her parents divorced when she was still at the age of seven. As a result, Gellar was raised by her mother and lost contact with her father. She was quite accomplished even when she was still a child. After all, Gellar was a child actress. Furthermore, she competed as a figure skater, which was on top of her having earned a black belt in taekwondo. Unfortunately, Gellar seems to have had some pretty unhappy moments in her childhood as well. For instance, she went to the Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School on a partial scholarship, with the result that she was constantly bullied because her family didn't have the same kind of money that theirs had. Later, Gellar went to the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts for some time but winded up dropping out because of her acting obligations. Something that presumably wasn't helped by the fact that her teachers threatened to fail her because of her absences even though she was doing very well in an academic sense. Still, Gellar did eventually graduate from the Professional Children's School, which was made possible by a lot of guided study.

In any case, Gellar got started as an actress with a TV movie called An Invasion of Privacy. After which, she started working on commercials. In particular, Gellar is known for a Burger King commercial in which her character said that she would only eat at said restaurant chain while criticizing its competitor McDonald's. Something that seems to have gotten under the skin of decision-makers at the latter restaurant chain because she was specifically named in the ensuing lawsuit. Besides the commercials, Gellar also worked on movies, TV shows, music videos, and at least one stage production throughout the 1980s. By the early 1990s, Gellar was starting to get noticed. For example, she played a young Jacqueline Bouvier in an Emmy-winning mini-series about the former first lady of the United States in 1991. Similarly, she got a couple of Young Artist Award nominations for a teen drama in 1992. Soon enough, Gellar made a soap opera debut as Kendall Hart on All My Children, which earned her a Daytime Emmy in 1995 before she left to pursue other acting opportunities. That brought her to Los Angeles, with the result that she read the script for Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 1996.

Even now, said show is one of the things that Gellar is best-known for. Some of the shine has worn off, particularly because of recent revelations about the show's creator. However, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a real cultural phenomenon in its time, not least because of how the choice to put a female protagonist in an action-oriented role subverted the stereotypical image of female victims in horror movies. It is interesting to note that Gellar almost didn't play the titular character. This is because she originally went for the role of Cordelia Chase before rethinking what she wanted, re-auditioning for the titular character, and then getting the titular character. Thanks to that, Gellar went on to become the center of a seven-season show that spawned a full-fledged media franchise through its success.

Unsurprisingly, the success of Buffy the Vampire Slayer meant that Gellar worked on other projects as well. She never had a career-defining mega-hit in the 2000s. However, Gellar was involved in a number of very successful projects. For example, she was in Cruel Intentions, which grossed $75.9 million on a $10.5 million budget. A figure that was enough to get both a prequel and a sequel made. Similarly, she and her eventual husband Freddie Prinze Jr. played Daphne Blake and Fred Jones in the two live-action Scooby-Doo movies of the early 2000s. The first of which was successful enough to ensure a sequel while the second still managed to gross $181.2 million on either a $25 million or $80 million budget with a much poorer reception. Eventually, Gellar became a mother in 2009, with the result that she took a two-year break from acting before returning at a much-reduced pace. She is still very much around in the entertainment industry, just less so than before. Other than acting, Gellar has taken on other roles as well. For example, she released a cookbook in 2017, which was co-authored with Gia Russo. Similarly, she and a couple of other entrepreneurs co-founded Foodstirs in 2015, which makes baking kits, baking mixes, and even baked treats through a number of channels. A company that has been successful enough that its products are now being sold through major retailers such as Starbucks, Whole Foods, and Walmart.

Further Considerations

Summed up, Gellar is a very successful actress who was very well-known in the 1990s and 2000s. As such, it seems safe to say that much of her net worth can be traced to her acting career. Since then, Gellar has co-founded a company that seems to be doing quite well even if its nature as a private company means that the public has a relatively limited understanding of its performance. Combined with her continuing acting career, it seems very possible that Gellar's net worth could continue to increase in the times to come.