Sarah Michelle Gellar: The Buffy Slayer

The onetime cult queen talks with Kelly Marages about tattoos, Botox, kids, Freddie, and being excited about turning 30

Q: We haven't seen so much of you lately. was it good to take a break? Not that you —
A: I did take a break! I did. I worked for so many years straight, it was all I knew. I was on All My Children, then I went to Buffy, and I worked nonstop. It was important to me to say, Wait a second — could I function without this? And you know, in the beginning, I couldn't.

Q: I'm sure.
A: I didn't know what to do with myself. I was going crazy. And then I was like, Wait — you mean I can pick up a book and read it start-to-finish? I can, you know, learn something?

Q: But now you've got five movies in the can. In Southland Tales you play a porn star...
A: I can honestly tell you that I'm incredibly proud of the work I did in it. Richard [Kelly, the director] assembled this unbelievable cast. Normally on a call sheet, they go in order of the leads, and when Justin Timberlake is, like, number 18 on the call sheet, you know you have a really heavy-hitting cast.

Q: Are you a Justin Timberlake fan?
A: You know what's so funny? I didn't even recognize him the first day. Seann William Scott was in the trailer, and he introduced me to "his friend Justin," and I thought, Wow, you look so familiar. I probably should have put it together, but he was just this guy hanging out with Seann. He has no airs about him. And that's what you want when you do a film: You want people to bring clean slates and become these characters.

Q: Of course, The Grudge 2 is about to come out...
A: Mind you, it's one of the biggest roles of my career — a total of about five minutes' screen time. [laughs]

Q: Get out. Really? Weren't you the lead in The Grudge?
A: I mean, that's probably exaggerated, but when you play a character like Buffy for so many years, and you get to do all these different things, and then you step into film, you realize that it's still a very tough market for women. For me, it's about finding roles where women get to do something active — where you're not the girlfriend, not the wife. There are mainly two types of films for us: women-in-jeopardy films and romantic movies. And finding the ones in between — films like The Air I Breathe [about a troubled pop star, due in December] and Southland Tales — is really difficult.

Q: It shocks me how many actresses seem to need to be on the cover of magazines like Us Weekly and put as much emphasis on that as —
A: Can I interrupt you?

Q: Sure, go ahead.
A: Do you think a lot of actresses strive to be on the covers of those?

Q: That's what I —
A: Because I don't. I think it's actually people striving to get into that celebrity position, but I think you'll find that most "actors" don't want that. Because if you learn too much about who they really are, it takes away the illusion that film creates. It's, I don't know, what's the word they're using? "Celebutantes." You know. I've watched the business change. When Buffy first hit, these weekly magazines didn't exist. The cover of the Enquirer was, like, "Bigfoot's Five-Headed Baby Discovered!"