Michelle Christine Trachtenberg was born in Brooklyn, NY on Oct. 11, 1985 to mother Lana, an actress and puppeteer, and father Michael, a fiber optics engineer. her first job at the age of three for an advertising campaign for the Kids ?R? Us chain of stores. Trachtenberg eventually attended a school for gifted children in Brooklyn, until she moved to California with her mother, where she then attended Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks, CA. By the time she was nine, Trachtenberg was in demand for recurring roles on several television shows, and she appeared in both the soap opera ?All My Children? (ABC, 1970-) as the autistic child Lily Benton Montgomery, as well as the kid-friendly program ?The Adventures of Pete and Pete? (Nickelodeon, 1993-96), until she was 11 years old. As fate would have it, working on ?All My Children? gave Trachtenberg the opportunity to act alongside Sarah Michelle Gellar, whom she looked up to as an actor, and would later co-star with on ?Buffy.? Much to the disappointment of millions of fans, ?Buffy?s? run ended in 2003 ? when Gellar refused to sign on for an eighth season ? giving Trachtenberg time to pursue film projects. In 2008, Trachtenberg joined the cast of ?Gossip Girl,? another show with a cult following, as Georgina Sparks, an Upper East-Sider who had just left rehab and was set to stir things up for the lead character Serena (Blake Lively).