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The last time Sarah
Michelle Gellar was in Toronto, she was six years old and filming a series
of Burger King commercials.
"I was the little
girl with the red overalls and the maple leaf," she says, cracking a
smile.
Now 23, she's in a
suburban Etobicoke college gym, filming Harvard Man. She's a
bona fide star who ensured the film would get made simply by agreeing to do
it.
Tomorrow, she heads to
L.A. to begin shooting new episodes of TV's Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
Today, she's doing interviews to mark the end of shooting for the movie,
which also stars Adrian Grenier (Drive Me Crazy), Rebecca Gayheart (Scream
2), Joey Lauren Adams (Chasing Amy), Eric Stolz (2 Days In The
Valley) and actor/NBA player Ray Allen (He Got Game).
Directed by James Toback
(Black & White), Harvard Man is about a basketball player
who strikes to deal with the Mob to fix a game. Gellar says she is
nothing like Cindy Bandolini, the mobster's daughter she plays in the movie.
"She is
spoiled," Gellar says. "She... has always gotten what she
wanted, but always wants more and to do more and prove more, and I think
that is how we as people tend to get in over our heads."
Gellar is, however,
unwilling to say what she is like. "I don't do that for a very
specific reason, just so that when I am at home with my friends and family,
that there is a separate life that I have, that is very important to
me."
She's trying hard to be
nice, though after undergoing a series of five-to 10-minute interviews she's
clearly tired and just a little frazzled.
"It has just been a
crazy day," she says, after being a little more brusque than she meant
to. She's perched on a bleacher at Humber College gym, which is
doubling as Harvard's basketball court.
Gellar told a previous
interviewer she feels some pressure working in another country, but with the
Post she makes a special effort to say she has had "an
incredible time in Toronto," and that she "could not have asked
for a nicer crew or nicer people. I can't stress it enough."
She has done the tourist
thing, she says, and visited everything from the CN Tower to the Maid of the
Mist in Niagara Falls.
Michael Mailer, producer
of Harvard Man and son of author Norman Mailer, says getting Gellar
to Toronto was a coup.
"We needed a couple
more name actors, but essentially, she is the driving force," he says
in an interview from his trailer on the Harvard Man set.
Gellar plays a
"classic female manipulator, who is very smart, very street savvy and
very tough at the same time. And she [Gellar] is doing a remarkable
job."
Asked whether Gellar's
personality on set is similar to that role, Mailer says, "There are
always part of us that we put in our role," but adds Gellar is
"great."
"I am very fond of
her... it is a big lovefest between her and I."
From her early days on All
My Children, where she won an Emmy at age 18, to her breakthrough role
as Buffy, Gellar is known for playing strong female characters.
She says that's a choice she makes when picking parts.
"I don't play
characters that are one-dimensional, I have no interest in that,"
Gellar says.
"To me, when I look
for a character to play, I look for someone that would be interesting for me
to watch, and watching a one-dimensional character - the bad girl, or the
dumb girl - there is no interest in that for me."
Brenda Bouw
National Post, 31 July 2000
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