The unexpected death of Michelle Trachtenberg, 39, on February 26, came as a devastating blow. Among fans, her loss is perhaps most keenly felt by those of us who grew up alongside the actor, watching her as a child star, teen, and finally as an adult actor.
According to ABC News, the actor was found dead in her New York City apartment, and is believed to have died of natural causes.
Some remember Trachtenberg best as Harriet the Spy, which, in 1996, was her first major movie role. At just 11 years old, Trachtenberg starred as the spunky kid-detective with a notebook full of incriminating observations about her classmates.
For others, in their hearts, Trachtenberg will always be Dawn, Buffy Summers’s annoying but lovable younger sister in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Dawn made her first Buffy appearance in season five in 2000, when she was introduced as the sister Buffy never knew she had. Her existence turned out to be part of a demonic plot, but Trachtenberg’s character stayed through the end of the series in 2003, by which point she had become as important a member of the Scooby-gang as any of the others, even if Dawn wasn’t initially beloved by fans. “I still get comments like, ‘Oh my God! I think Dawn is so annoying!’ I get it. It’s fine,” Trachtenberg quipped to Entertainment Weekly in 2017. “It used to be a 60-40 ‘I hate Dawn.’ Then, it became 50-50. Now, I think it’s 60-40 being supportive of Dawn. Maybe even 70-30.”
While in her teenage and young adult years, Trachtenberg made memorable appearances in raunchy teen comedies, (EuroTrip) and family-friendly Disney classics (Ice Princess). In 2008, Trachtenberg originated yet another iconic television character, the manipulative arch-villainess Georgina Sparks in the original Gossip Girl. Georgina was immediately one of the series’s most delightfully unhinged characters in a cast stacked with the delightfully unhinged. Gossip Girl fans knew the moment she appeared that the episode was about to take you on a wild ride. “Georgina is actually my favorite character that I’ve played because she’s such an evil B-I-T-C-H,” Trachtenberg once said in an Entertainment Tonight interview.
Trachtenberg’s career slowed in the 2010s, but she never stopped acting, and even got to reprise her favorite role in 2022 in two episodes of the rebooted Gossip Girl.
Throughout her career, Michelle Trachtenberg made each of her characters—the evil, the annoying, and the adorable—uniquely memorable.
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