Early life and education[edit]
Gellar was born in New York City, New York. She is the only child of Rosellen (Greenfield), a nursery school teacher, and Arthur Gellar, a garment worker.[11] Both of her parents wereJewish, though Gellar's family had a Christmas tree during her childhood holidays.[12][13] In 1984, when she was seven, her parents divorced and she was raised by her mother on the city'sUpper East Side.[14] While Gellar grew up with her mother, she lost contact with her father, from whom she remained estranged until his death in 2001;[15][16][17] she once described him as "non-existent",[18] and has remarked: "My father, you can just say, is not in the picture. I'm not being deliberately evasive about him, it's just that there's so little to say. He is not a person who exists in my life. Just because you donate sperm does not make you a father. I don't have a father. I would never give him the credit to acknowledge him as my father."[17][19][20] Besides being a working child at the time, Gellar was a competitive figure skater, finishing in third place at the New York State regional competition.[21] She also placed fourth at a Tae Kwon Docompetition at Madison Square Garden (she was a black belt).[21]
Gellar was given a partial scholarship to study at the Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School,[21][22] as her mother was not able to pay full tuition, for which she was constantly bullied.[23]She said in an interview with The Independent: "I was different and that's the one thing you can't be at school, because you're ostracised. I didn't have the money these kids had".[24] Gellar was not present in class for most of the time at the school as she had to work in several acting projects simultaneously, recalling that she "had more absences in the first month than you're supposed to have for an entire year. I was telling them that I had back problems and had to go to the doctor the whole time".[21] Gellar then briefly attended the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, but dropped out due to acting obligations; the teachers threatened to fail her because of her constant absence from classes as she was busy going to auditions, despite earning good grades.[21] Gellar graduated from the Professional Children's School,[21][25][26] in 1994 as a straight-A student with a 4.0 grade average.[27][28][29][30]As Gellar spent significant time working on All My Children while "trying to graduate",[31] the majority of her senior year was completed through guided study.[32]
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