Buffy star Michelle Trachtenberg dies aged 39

Michelle Trachtenberg, a former child star who appeared in the 1996 Harriet the Spy hit movie and went on to co-star in two buzzy millennial-era TV shows - Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Gossip Girl - has died. She was 39.

Police responded to a 911 call shortly after 8am at a 51-story luxury apartment tower in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood where officers found Trachtenberg "unconscious and unresponsive."

Paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene. No foul play was suspected and the the cause of death is being investigated, police said.

Trachtenberg was 8 when she began playing Nona Mecklenberg on Nickelodeon's The Adventures of Pete & Pete from 1994 to 1996 and then starred in the title role in the film adaptations of Harriet the Spy and Inspector Gadget.

In 2000 she joined the cast of Buffy, playing Dawn Summers, the younger sister of the title character played by Sarah Michelle Gellar between 2000 and 2003.

In 2001, Trachtenberg received a Daytime Emmy nomination for hosting Discovery's Truth or Scare. She went on to recurring roles on Six Feet Under, Weeds and Gossip Girl, where she played the gang's scheming nemesis, Georgina Sparks.

For her fan-favorite role, she was nominated as a TV villain at the Teen Choice Award in 2012. "It's definitely a lot more fun than playing the good girl," she said in 2009.

As if to cement herself in millennial culture, Trachtenberg made a cameo in Fall Out Boy's music video for This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race alongside Seth Green.

The New York City-born Trachtenberg also appeared in the 2004 teen sex comedy EuroTrip, she co-starred with Zac Efron in 2009's 17 Again and played a murderous stalker and abductor on an episode of Criminal Minds.

For Killing Kennedy, the 2013 film in which she played the wife of Lee Harvey Oswald, around 80 percent of Trachtenberg's dialogue was in Russian. She had learned the language from her mother growing up.

Other credits included supporting roles in the films Mysterious Skin in 2004 and Black Christmas in 2006. She also starred on the NBC medical series Mercy from 2009 to 2010 opposite Taylor Schilling. More recently, she hosted the true-crime docuseries Meet, Marry, Murder on Tubi.

Associated Press