Michelle Trachtenberg, ‘Gossip Girl’ and ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Actor, Dies at 39

Michelle Trachtenberg, the actor best known for film and television roles including “Gossip Girl” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” has died. She was 39.

She was found in her New York City apartment, according to police. She recently underwent a liver transplant, according to the New York Post, which first reported the news; Trachtenberg’s cause of death has not been confirmed.

Born in New York on Oct. 11, 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, J. Smith-Cameron.

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Trachtenberg’s breakthrough, however, was playing Dawn Summers on the teen drama “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” which ran on the WB in the early aughts.

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 until it ended with season seven in 2003.

She found further success in another teen drama, portraying the perennial mean girl Georgina Sparks on “Gossip Girl,” which ran from 2007 to 2012.

Trachtenberg’s character, a diabolical Manhattan socialite, regularly found herself feuding, or blackmailing, with Blake Lively’s Serena van der Woodsen and Leighton Meester’s Blair Waldorf. She briefly reprised her role on HBO Max’s “Gossip Girl” reboot in 2022.

During the mid-to-late-2000s, Trachtenberg starred in films such as 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 appeared in 2009’s “17 Again” with Zac Efron and Leslie Mann, as well as episodes of various TV shows including “Law & Order,” “Clarissa Explains It All,” “All My Children,” “Six Feet Under” and “Weeds.”