While Hollywood might be famous for producing very short unions, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. have certainly bucked the trend.
This September, the couple will celebrate 22 years of wedded bliss. And the secret to their success seems to be that despite their star status, this is one couple who has remained incredibly down-to-earth.
Gellar seems more than happy to skip red carpet and gala events to stay home and join her husband in his favourite low-key pastime, which just happens to be painting miniature figurines.
“I actually will go paint with him,” the 46-year-old actress revealed to E! News in a recent interview.
“I love it. Mine aren’t as good as his. I don’t do it as often. I also love adult colouring books. Sometimes, I’ll just go up to his office with him. We’ll just paint and we’ll talk and just chill.”
When they met on the set of I Know What You Did Last Summer, Gellar and Prinze Jr. were fairly unknown.
But that would all change when the teen horror flick became the must-see summer blockbuster of 1997.
That and her titular role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer made Gellar a household name, while roles in rom-coms like She’s All That and Down to You cemented Prinze Jr.’s status as a heartthrob.
Things turned romantic for the friends in 2000, when their mutual pal stood them up for dinner and they ended up on an “accidental date”.
Things obviously went very well because Gellar was making her way down the aisle in 2002.
Today, they call Los Angeles home and share two children, daughter Charlotte, 14, and son Rocky, 11.
While being parents to teens has its tricky moments, the family spends plenty of quality time together.
“We play board games,” Gellar told E! News. “I puzzle-overloaded during COVID, so I had to take a little break from puzzles, but we do a lot of board games and card games.”
They are also a family that sits down to dinner together each night, with one very important rule.
“If we’re all at home eating dinner together, there are no phones,” she said. “It’s a moment of connection.”
And it’s likely you’ll find Prinze Jr. in the kitchen whipping those family meals up.
In fact, he credits his culinary skills for his marriage’s longevity.
“My mum was a chef and I learned how to cook, and I married someone who couldn’t cook,” the 47-year-old told The Kyle and Jackie O Show. “So I’m necessary. [My wife] needs me to live and sustain herself,” he quipped.
With such talented genes in the family, don’t be surprised if at least one of their children follows them into showbusiness.
“My daughter is a competitive dancer,” Gellar said of Charlotte. “She dances five days a week. The girls are such a team, and they all support each other.”
Though it won’t be for at least a few years. After making her film debut in An Invasion of Privacy aged just 6, Gellar has no desire to see her offspring become child stars or get labelled Nepo Babies anytime soon.
“[Charlotte] can’t be in front of a camera until she graduates high school,” Gellar revealed to The Hollywood Reporter.
“She says to me, ‘That’s unfair. You were a child actor.’ Yes, I was. But I was not the child of two famous parents … There’ll be different expectations for her, so she needs to learn everything there is first.”
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