HOWZAT

Gellar branched out into movies increasingly towards the end, but the critics were rarely kind. “I don't make movies for reviewers,” retorts Gellar. “I make them for fans.”

“ My feedback comes from, like, I was in New York City last weekend, and I could hear people talking about the movie, not realising that I was two feet behind them.”

It surprises me, I remark, that she could be two feet behind anybody without them realising. Didn’t GQ readers vote her as their sexiest woman a few years ago?

Gellar corrects me. Actually, it was FHM who voted her sexiest woman. In 1999. “But you know what?” she adds. “That doesn’t even seem like me. It’s the same as the magazine covers. It’s not like I introduce myself with ‘Hi! I’m Sarah! I’m FHM's sexiest’!” She pauses. “It would be funny if I did, though, wouldn't it?”

Rather weakly, I agree. Gellar leant forward rather close to say that last bit, and adopted a husky voice. I’m feeling a little unsettled.

While many in this country see her only as Buffy, she has been performing since being “discovered” in a restaurant at the age of four. Gellar is now 27. If her career is about to go supernova — and on the back of The Grudge it may — then it is not before time. But did the incredible success of Buffy come as a shock? Despite being ostensibly aimed at teenagers, the relentless physicality of the show — along with that schoolgirl edge — meant that Buffy was adopted as a lust figure by older, male viewers.

When I was a student, I tell her, there used to be a drinking game . . .

“The Buffy drinking game,” says Gellar, and claps, delightedly. “Like, every time you saw Buff’s bra strap, you had to drink?”

Er, yes, I admit.

“That was so cool,” she crows. This is what makes interviewing Sarah Michelle Gellar difficult. Every answer seems prepared. You throw a pervy bra-strap question in her direction, expecting some kind of sob story about sexual objects and personal growth, and instead you get bright-eyed, impersonal enthusiasm.

She will talk movies, she will talk industry, but she will not talk Sarah Michelle Gellar. Take politics. Elections, I say. Are you going to be home in time to vote?

“I voted by post,” she says.

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