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Michelle Trachtenberg, a touchstone of millennial youth culture who grew up onscreen, rising to fame as a troubled teenager on the supernatural 1990s series \u201cBuffy the Vampire Slayer\u201d and as a conniving young socialite on \u201cGossip Girl,\u201d was found dead on Wednesday in Manhattan. She was 39.<\/p>\n
The New York Police Department said in a statement that officers, responding to a 911 call just after 8 a.m. on Wednesday, found Ms. Trachtenberg unconscious and unresponsive in a Manhattan apartment. She was pronounced dead by emergency medical workers, who had also responded.<\/p>\n
The department said that the medical examiner would determine the cause of death, but added that criminal activity was not suspected.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Ms. Trachtenberg established her longstanding presence on the small screen at the age of 3, when she appeared in a television commercial for Wisk laundry detergent in which she spilled cranberry juice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Before she was 10, she was making regular appearances on the Nickelodeon sitcom \u201cThe Adventures of Pete & Pete<\/a>,\u201d as well appearing on the enduring ABC daytime drama \u201cAll My Children.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Her breakout came at 11, when she made her big-screen debut in the title role of \u201cHarriet the Spy\u201d<\/a> (1996), the film adaptation of Louise Fitzhugh\u2019s 1964 children\u2019s book, which also featured Rosie O\u2019Donnell as Harriet\u2019s nanny, Ole Golly. She drew praise for her performance as Harriet Welsch, a precocious<\/a> girl who draws scorn from schoolmates over her imagined spy adventures, which she meticulously chronicles in a notebook.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Reviewing the film in The New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote that Ms. Trachtenberg \u201cgives a performance that is as endearing as it is devoid of self-conscious cuteness,\u201d adding, \u201cHer Harriet is high-spirited and stubborn, but never unlikable.\u201d<\/p>\n She found a new level of fame as a teenager in 2000, when she joined the cast of \u201cBuffy the Vampire Slayer\u201d during its fifth season, as the younger sister of the mystically powered Buffy Summers, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, a longtime friend who knew Ms. Trachtenberg from their days on \u201cAll My Children.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Her character, plagued with adolescent angst and bouts of kleptomania, inspired pushback from some fans. \u201cI still get comments like, \u2018Oh my God! I think Dawn is so annoying!<\/a>,\u2019\u201d she said in a 2017 interview with Entertainment Weekly. She added that she got \u201ca lot of \u2018Oh, she was so whiny!\u2019 Hi, were you a teenager? Oh, you were docile, sitting in the corner, doe-eyed and happy to be there? No. There\u2019s a reason why teenagers have a stigma.\u201d<\/p>\n Michelle Christine Trachtenberg was born on Oct. 11, 1985, in New York City, the younger of two daughters of <\/em>Michael and Lana Trachtenberg. Her father was a fiber-optics technician from Germany; her mother, a bank manager from Russia.<\/p>\n Growing up in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn, she was encouraged by her parents to pursue her early screen dreams; her career began with a series of television commercials<\/a> when she was a child, which eventually led to meatier roles. Her family moved to Los Angeles, where she attended Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks and was within striking range of Hollywood.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Following \u201cBuffy,\u201d Ms. Trachtenberg had grown beyond child-star status and began to play more adult roles in films like the 2004 teenage sex comedy \u201cEuroTrip<\/a>.\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s a scene at a nude beach, and in a \u00adcertain shot the bottom of one of my \u2026 things started to fall out,\u201d she said in 2004 interview<\/a> with The Daily News of New York. \u201cThe filmmakers said, \u2018Oh, we won\u2019t use that, don\u2019t worry.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, right,\u201d she added. \u201cGuess which shot they used?\u201d<\/p>\n In a 2012 interview<\/a> with Complex magazine, she recalled a scene in the 2006 film \u201cBeautiful Ohio,\u201d starring William Hurt and Rita Wilson, that featured her \u201cnaked tush.\u201d It was, she said, \u201cprobably one of the most horrendous moments of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt would take an army \u2014 or Martin Scorsese \u2014 to ever get me naked again,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n She took a more wholesome turn in 2005 when she played a science-geek-turned-figure-skater in \u201cIce Princess.\u201d \u201cI trained for eight months<\/a> for the movie,\u201d she said in an interview that year with \u201cThe Early Show\u201d on CBS. \u201cMy big favorite move to do is the outside edge spread eagle, which I worked really hard on and came close to perfecting it many times, and finally, one day, it hit.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In 2008, she added another career-defining role, joining the cast of \u201cGossip Girl,\u201d the popular CW drama about the privileged lives of moneyed and misbehaving private school students on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, as the scheming Georgina Sparks.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m the new bitch in town,\u201d she said in an interview that year with The Sunday Telegraph newspaper of Britain, \u201cand I\u2019m going to make my presence known.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After that series ended in 2012, Ms. Trachtenberg popped up in other television series, including \u201cNCIS: Los Angeles,\u201d and starred in the television movies \u201cKilling Kennedy\u201d (in which she played Marina Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald\u2019s wife) in 2013, \u201cThe Christmas Gift\u201d in 2015, and \u201cSister Cities\u201d in 2016. She also played a high school guidance counselor investigating a scandal involving a popular girl on campus in the web series \u201cGuidance,\u201d which debuted in 2015.<\/p>\n Information about survivors was not immediately available.<\/p>\n Despite dealing with the pressures of stardom from an early age, Ms. Trachtenberg told Complex that she managed to steer clear of the pitfalls of early fame \u2014 including drugs. \u201cMy mom was protective,\u201d she recalled. \u201cBut she just said, \u2018It\u2019s your choice \u2014 you ruin your career<\/a> or don\u2019t.\u2019 If you realize how lucky you are to be sitting in the position you are, then you just don\u2019t drink, don\u2019t do the cocaine.\u201d<\/p>\n Chelsia Rose Marcius and Aimee Ortiz contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n