Sarah Michelle Gellar was one of the biggest stars of the 00s. When Robin Williams died, she quit acting.

Content warning: This post includes discussion of suicide that may be distressing to some readers. 

When Robin Williams took his own life in 2014, Sarah Michelle Gellar poured out her heart in an emotional statement.

"To my children he was Uncle Robin, to everyone he worked with he was the best boss anyone had ever known, and to me, he was not just an inspiration but he was the father I had always dreamed of having," she told People.

Williams' death affected Gellar deeply, in ways that she's only revealing now.

Gellar's parents – Rosellen, an early childhood teacher, and Arthur, who worked in the clothing industry – divorced when she was eight. By then, she was already well established as an actress, having been talent spotted at a young age.

Watch: Buffy The Vampire's Sarah Michelle Gellar joins Paramount+'s Wolf Pack. Story continues below.

"I was at a playdate with friends when I was about four, and this mother said, 'Do you want to be on TV?'" Gellar told the Independent. "I said, 'Sure.'"

Gellar's first dramatic role was in the 1983 tele movie An Invasion Of Privacy, but her most controversial was a Burger King ad she appeared in when she was just five. In it, she claimed Burger King was better than McDonald's. McDonald's sued, it dragged her into the lawsuit, and she spent on her childhood avoiding McDonald's restaurants.

Sarah Michelle Gellar in An Invasion of Privacy (Left) and in the Burger King advertisement (Right). Image: IMDb.

Through school, Gellar kept scoring roles, but her mother never let her lose focus on schoolwork, telling her that if her grades ever dropped below an A minus, she had to put the acting on hold. She won a scholarship to an elite New York private school, but coming from a single-parent home where money was tight – "I barely had enough money for my bus pass" – she didn't fit in. 

"I was different, and that's the one thing you can't be at school, because you're ostracised," she told the Independent.

She ended up moving to the Professional Children's School, attended by other child actors like Jerry O'Connell.

At 16, they cast Gellar as Kendall Hart in the soap All My Children. She stayed in the role for two years, winning a Daytime Emmy, but then moved to Los Angeles, determined to make it outside the soap world.

Sarah Michelle Gellar in All My Children. Image: ABC.

She knocked back offers, waiting for the right script came along, and then it did: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. After originally auditioning for the role of Cordelia Chase, she ended up being cast as the lead, Buffy Summers.

Sarah Michelle Gellar in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Image: 20th Century Fox Television.

The show, which ran from 1997 to 2003, subverted the trope of the petite blonde girl being the victim, making her the butt-kicking hero instead. Girls loved it and so did boys. She was one of the hottest young stars of the era, voted sexiest woman in the world by FHM in 1999.

"Men are turned on by a powerful woman, especially a physically powerful woman," she told Movieline. "I'm a little person, and to see this five-foot-two, 100-pound blonde girl kicking ass is exciting."

The media wanted to know everything about her, including the lowdown on her relationship with her father Arthur. 

"Just because you donate sperm does not make you a father," she told TV Guide in 2000. "I don't have a father. My mother is the most amazing woman I've ever met. I wanted for nothing."

The following year, Arthur Gellar was found dead in his apartment, at the age of 60. A friend said he had cancer and was "suffering from depression".

Gellar met her future husband, Freddie Prinze Jr, on the set of the 1997 slasher film I Know What You Did Last Summer. When they were filming in North Carolina, Prinze would drive Gellar to set because she didn't have her driver's licence.

Sarah Michelle Gellar in I Know What You Did Last Summer. Image: Columbia Pictures.

"By the end of the movie, I just wanted to be friends with her because I thought she was too skinny and I wanted to cook for her," Prinze told Us. "Because that's what my family does."

Years of friendship turned into romance, and they married in Mexico in 2002, with Buffy choreographer Adam Shankman officiating.

Sarah Michelle Gellar with Freddie Prinze Jr. Image: Getty.

"We're both homebodies," Gellar told Movieline the year she married Prinze. "We love to have our friends over. We love board games – we'll play them until three in the morning."

From the beginning of their relationship, Prinze said he was happy to be the househusband, while Gellar felt she was driven to "accomplish so much" in her career.

Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr on their wedding, 2002. Image: Breaking News Today.

"Everything I have in my life I've worked for – my home, my car, clothing. I didn't have any of this growing up. My mom and I really scraped by."

After Buffy, Gellar starred in movies such as The Grudge, as well as the TV series Ringer, which she also executive produced. She and Prinze welcomed daughter Charlotte in 2009 and son Rocky in 2012.

Sarah Michelle Gellar in The Grudge (Left) and in Ringer (Right). Image: Columbia Pictures Ghost House Pictures/CW.

When Gellar, a longtime fan of Robin Williams, heard he was going to star in a sitcom, The Crazy Ones, she used her friendship with the wife of Williams' good friend Bobcat Goldthwait to lobby for the role of Williams' on-screen daughter. She got it.

Sarah Michelle Gellar with Robin Williams in The Crazy Ones. Image: CBS.

When the pilot was shot, Gellar was still breastfeeding Rocky.

"They would joke that when my outfits stopped fitting me during the day, it was time to take a break and let Sarah go back to her trailer," she told YourTango.

As the sitcom revolves around a father-daughter relationship, Gellar opened up to YourTango about her own experience.

"Father-daughter relationships, until recently, were something I had to read about or ask people about because I didn't have a relationship with my father. But what's amazing now is to watch the relationship between my husband and our daughter and to really sort of understand it in a different way, and also to watch Robin with his daughter."

The sitcom only ran for one season. Three months after it was cancelled, Williams, who was suffering from Lewy body dementia, took his own life.

Gellar told People last week that she took a step back from her career to process the death of Williams.

"I've been working my entire life," she said. "When I had kids – and it was right after Robin passed away – there was just so much going on in my life and I just said, 'I need to take a break.'"

She said she felt she needed to be around for the "early formative years" of her kids' lives. 

"I needed that break to be the parent that I wanted to be."

For the next few years, Gellar only took on occasional roles, such as guest starring in the final of The Big Bang Theory. 

Sarah Michelle Gellar's guest appearance in The Big Bang Theory. Image: Warner Bros. Television Studios.

She co-founded Foodstirs, a company selling organic baking mixes to families, and also released a cookbook. She and Prinze focused on parenting, being able to set Rocky straight when he claimed girls couldn't kick butt like boys could.

"My husband Googled a YouTube clip of, like, Buffy's finest fighting moments, and it was so cute because my son's eyes got so wide and he said, 'Mama, you could do that?'" Gellar told Parade.

Recently, Gellar found she was starting to miss acting. She signed on to the series Wolf Pack, where she stars as an arson investigator, and is also executive producer.

"It's about working with people that I really love working with, where I look forward to spending time with the people," Gellar told People. "We're creative, and yeah, sometimes the nights are really long, but what we get to do is really cool."

If you think you may be experiencing depression or another mental health problem, please contact your general practitioner. If you're based in Australia, 24-hour support is available through Lifeline on 13 11 14 or beyondblue on 1300 22 4636.

Feature Image: 20th Century Fox/Columbia Pictures/CBS/Mamamia.