Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Gellar has snared hot young actor Freddie Prinze Jr. - right from under the nose of her former movie co-star Jennifer Love Hewitt.

Freddie and Sarah have been dating for several weeks, and NW has the first romantic pictures of the couple, out together in Los Angeles. Their new liaison Makes for an interesting love triangle, as, until recently, Freddie has been dating Jennifer, who co-starred with Sarah and Freddie in the teen slasher flick I Know What You did Last Summer.

As recently as January, Jennifer and Freddie, who actually played boyfriend and girlfriend in the movie, were pictured hugging and kissing in the front yard of his bachelor pad in the up-market LA suburb Toluca Lake. At the time, Jennifer, 21, had just broken up with MTV host Carson Daly, and Freddie had split from his long-term girlfriend, soap star Kimberly McCullough.

Freddie was often seen on the set of Jennifer’s doomed TV show Time of Your Life, and insiders said they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. But just months later, it seems the 24-year-old star of She’s All That and Wing Commander has been wooed away by his other co-star. Sarah, 22, and Freddie have been friends since shooting I Know, and last week the couple made their new romance public when they ventured out to lunch together in LA.

The pair held hands and kissed throughout the meal, and later drove home to Freddie’s house, where (romantic sigh here_ he whisked her out of the car and carried her to the door. Freddie and Sarah have been out and about at a number of Hollywood nightclubs, and restaurants over the last couple of weeks, and even though their friendship is only in its infancy, Freddie has already told friends that Sarah’s his perfect woman. "Sarah’s just the kind of girl I have been looking for," he says.

As for Jennifer, this romantic snub seems to be just the latest in a string of disasters for the petite actress. Her two-year romance with Carson Daly came to a sudden end, not long after repots she was having an affair with her married Party of Five co-star Scott Bairstow. Her new series Time of Your Life bombed, and her Audrey Hepburn movie is rumored to be so bad that US TV networks are reluctant to but it.

Sarah’s Buffy is going from strength to strength, and her romantic life is finally blooming. Friends sat the actress is extremely fussy when it comes to men, and few have lasted long. She’s had a few brief relationships, with Friends star Matthew Perry and Jerry Maguire’s Jerry O’Connell, and even had a brief flirtation with former co-star David Boreanaz (now in Angel), but she hasn’t had a serious boyfriend in years.

"At the end of the day, none of them fulfilled her expectations," says a friend. "So Sarah has been spending nights at home studying scripts with her dog, Thor. That was until Freddie cam along. Now she’s found a guy she’s really interested in."