For a whole generation, they were the couple of the late 1990s: the vampire slayer and the teen-movie heartthrob. Nearly three decades after they met on a film set, one of the most private couples in Hollywood just gave fans a glimpse of their family, and one detail in the photos sent everyone straight back to the early 2000s.
In short
- Sarah Michelle Gellar shared photos of her son Rocky, 14, at a go-kart racing weekend on October 26.
- With a new close-cropped haircut, Rocky looks strikingly like Freddie Prinze Jr. in the early 2000s.
- The couple met in 1997 and celebrated 24 years of marriage on September 1.
The post that started it
On October 26, Sarah Michelle Gellar posted photos on Instagram from a weekend spent supporting Rocky at a go-kart race, alongside throwback pictures of herself and her husband from the early 2000s. “@realfreddieprinze can you imagine telling these kids where they would be 24 years later (well tech 26… but 24 married),” she wrote, as reported by USA Today.
Why does Rocky look so much like his dad?
The haircut. Rocky, the couple’s youngest child, recently swapped his longer brown hair for a close crop, a change Freddie Prinze Jr. shared on Instagram about a week earlier. His father wore a very similar buzzcut in the early 2000s, including while promoting Summer Catch in 2001 and at his Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony in December 2004. Side by side, the resemblance is hard to miss.
A teen with his own passion
Rocky has been sharing his racing since late August. In an August 31 post, he explained that in kindergarten he had written that his dream was to race cars someday. The couple also has a daughter, Charlotte Grace, 17.
How Sarah and Freddie met
The pair met while filming the 1997 horror hit I Know What You Did Last Summer. “Sarah and I became really, really good friends on that movie, long before we ever went on a date together,” Prinze Jr. has said. “We started dating by accident. It just kind of happened.” They married in 2002 and marked their 24th anniversary on September 1.
Celebrity kids who share their parents’ looks always fascinate fans, as the new names chosen by Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s children showed recently.
Why this couple still fascinates
- A rare long marriage. Twenty-four years is an exception by Hollywood standards.
- Privacy. The couple shares family moments only occasionally, which makes each post an event.
- Nostalgia. Their late-1990s fame is part of the same wave that keeps 90s icons like Pamela Anderson in the spotlight.
The limit
The comparison comes from photos shared on social media and from the couple’s own posts. Neither parent has commented further on Rocky’s look, and the family has not said how much of his racing they plan to share publicly.
The bottom line
Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. met as two young stars on a horror movie set. Nearly 30 years later, their son is racing go-karts with his father’s early-2000s haircut, and the resemblance is a sweet reminder of how far that love story has come.
