Michelle Trachtenberg, best known for her roles as Georgina Sparks on Gossip Girl and Dawn Summers on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has died at 39. Multiple outlets reported on Wednesday that the actress was found dead around 8 a.m. local time in her New York City apartment today, Feb. 26.
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According to ABC News, Trachtenberg underwent a recent liver transplant and “may have been experiencing complications.” The actress is believed to have died of natural causes and no foul play is suspected.
Trachtenberg rose to fame as a child actress on the surreal sitcom The Adventures of Pete & Pete on Nickelodeon, playing the arm cast-wearing Nona F. Mecklenberg, before making her film debut in the 1996 Nickelodeon movie Harriet the Spy. Her next major film role was as Penny Brown, niece of Matthew Broderick’s John Brown, in Disney’s Inspector Gadget movie in 1999, and as ice skater Casey Carlyle in the 2005 Disney sports comedy Ice Princess.
As she transitioned to more adult roles, Trachtenberg, then 18, played Jenny in the 2004 raunchy comedy Eurotrip, and then pop star Celeste in HBO’s Six Feet Under to further distance herself from her kid-sister persona.
Trachtenberg went on to join the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a key role as Dawn, the younger sister of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Buffy, appearing in 66 episodes between 2000 and 2003. She hosted the Discovery Kids docu-series Truth or Scare before landing her role as bad girl Georgina Sparks opposite Blake Lively on The CW series Gossip Girl, a role she reprised for two episodes of the 2021 Max sequel series.
Last January, after Trachtenberg shared a selfie with fellow former child actor Alexa PenaVega (Spy Kids), she responded to followers who said she looked “sick.”
“Explain to me how I look sick,” she wrote on the Jan. 17 post. “Did you lose a calendar and not realize I’m not 14. I’m 38. How sad for you to leave such a comment.”
In a subsequent post (above) shared with her more than 800,000 Instagram followers, Trachtenberg shared another selfie and wrote, “I’ve received several comments recently about my appearance. I have never had plastic surgery I am happy and healthy. Check yourself haters.”
Most recently, Trachtenberg shared several throwback photos on Instagram, including her 2013 appearance at the Los Angeles premiere of Killing Kennedy and her “Cinderella”-inspired gown during an appearance at the School Of American Ballet Winter Ball in 2011.
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