It's one of those damp and gray early winter mornings in New York City, the kind that wipes out any memory of last summer's tanks and Dr. Scholl's sandals. Then Sarah Michelle Gellar walks into the studio for this photo shoot wearing huge Audrey Hepburn shades and radiating enough Pacific Coast perkiness to warm up the room. She's talking rapid fire about how she was supposed to hang out the night before with Jerry, Neve, and David (that would be O'Connell, Campbell and Arquette)—you'd think she'd inahled the entire Starbucks East Coast supply on the way over. But no, she explains with a smile, “I just hate doing interviews, so the faster I finish, the better it is for me.”
Well, um, okay. Gotta grab another sweater after that icy gust. Still, it's hard not to have a tiny little drop of sympathy for 20-year-old Sarah. Consider her week: “I worked all day Monday, I came in at 6 A.M. on Tuesday and worked until one in the morning, went home, fed my dog, packed my bags, went back to work at 7 A.M., worked until 2 A.M., got on an airplane, got here at 3 P.M., got up at six to do Regis & Kathie Lee, did the Got Milk campaign, went on Letterman and did MTV Live.” (By the way, all that was said without any oxygen intake.) “Right now I'm probably working toward an early grave,” Sarah sighs, seated in the makeup chair with a script on her lap. “I'm tired and I complain sometimes, but this is my career and I love it.”