Rise to Fame
She won a Daytime Emmy at 18 playing the villain on All My Children, which meant Buffy casting directors assumed she'd only work as the mean girl. She auditioned for Cordelia, not the lead. Joss Whedon pulled her back in to read for Buffy, and she spent a week fighting for the role before they gave it to her. The show ran 144 episodes and made her the decade's defining TV action heroine, while Cruel Intentions proved she could play the manipulator as well as she could play the hero.
In the Spotlight
Hulu killed the Buffy reboot she'd been developing with director Chloé Zhao in March 2026, reportedly because one executive had never watched the original and didn't feel the need to. Her organic baking startup Foodstirs quietly shuttered in 2021 with no public statement. Now she's judging Netflix's revival of Star Search and says she has "nothing left to prove," which is a decent summary of where she's landed.
Side Notes
A 1981 Burger King commercial had her, at age five, telling the camera that McDonald's burgers were inferior. McDonald's reportedly sued everyone involved and left her too uncomfortable to set foot in one for years. She turned down American Beauty and Fight Club to stay on Buffy, which looked like the wrong call at the time. She's been married to Freddie Prinze Jr. since 2002, and two decades of selective public appearances suggest she figured out the long game early.