‘Gossip Girl’ star Michelle Trachtenberg dies at 39
‘Gossip Girl’ star Michelle Trachtenberg dies at 39
A diabolical Manhattan socialite character, portraying the agent of chaos known as Georgina Sparks on “Gossip Girl,” actress Michelle Trachtenberg has died aged 39
LOS ANGELES — “Gossip Girl” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” actressMichelle Trachtenberg has died aged 39.
According to the New York City police department, the
actress was found unconscious and unresponsive Wednesday in her Manhattan
apartment, reports variety.com.
According to the New York Post, she had recently undergone a
liver transplant. Trachtenberg’s cause of death has not been confirmed, but the
New York Police Department (NYPD) said criminality was not suspected.
In a statement, NYPD said that officers responded to a 911
call just after 8 a.m. and Trachtenberg was pronounced dead by emergency
medical workers, who also responded to the scene.
“It is with great sadness to confirm that Michelle
Trachtenberg has passed away. The family requests privacy for their loss. There
are no further details at this time,” publicist Gary Mantoosh said in a
statement.
Born in New York in 1985, Trachtenberg began acting at a
young age. She was 3 years old when she began appearing in commercials and soon
after landed her first TV credit, on the Nickelodeon series “The Adventures of
Pete & Pete,” which aired in the mid 1990s.
By age 10, she scored her first starring film role in 1996’s
“Harriet the Spy,” in which she played the eponymous aspiring sleuth opposite
Rosie O’Donnell and J. Smith-Cameron.
Trachtenberg’s breakthrough, however, was playing Dawn
Summers on the teen drama “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. Trachtenberg joined the
popular show in its fifth season as the younger sister of Sarah Michelle
Geller’s Buffy Summers and remained on the series through its seventh and final
season in 2003.
She found further success on another teen drama, portraying
the agent of chaos known as Georgina Sparks on “Gossip Girl,” which ran from
2007 to 2012. Her character, a diabolical Manhattan socialite, regularly found
herself feuding, or blackmailing, with Blake Lively’s role Serena van der
Woodsen and Leighton Meester’s Blair Waldorf.
She briefly reprised her role in the “Gossip Girl” reboot in
2022.
Trachtenberg has a long list of genre-spanning credits on
the big and small screen. Her film roles include 2004’s “Eurotrip,” the raunchy
teen comedy that popularized the fictional song “Scotty Doesn’t Know,” and
2005’s “Ice Princess,” a comparatively wholesome film about a nerdy high
schooler with a passion for figure skating.
She also starred in 2009’s “17 Again” with Zac Efron and
Matthew Perry as well as episodes of TV shows such as “Law & Order,”
“Clarissa Explains It All,” “All My Children,” “Six Feet Under” and “Weeds.”
