For her fan-favourite 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 told Seventeen in 2009. I love the reaction you get. I never understood why some actors don’t want to play villains or evil characters.”
She was one of the original series’ stars to return for a pair of guest appearances in the 2021 Gossip Girl revival.
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.
Hollywood took to social media to mourn one of their own, one who had made the transition from kid star to teen queen to adult actor. Buffy The Vampire Slayer co-star David Boreanaz said on Instagram it was “so very sad.. horrible news.” Melissa Gilbert, who starred with Trachtenberg in the 1996 film A Holiday For Love, wrote on Instagram: “My heart aches for your family and all those who loved you so.”
Trachtenberg’s other credits included Ice Princess in 2005, playing a math prodigy and aspiring figure skater. The AP said it had “a good, though feeble, heart and the best of intentions” and said Trachtenberg was “mining the same nervous twitter from her kid-sister days on Buffy The Vampire Slayer”.
The New York City-born Trachtenberg also appeared in the 2004 teen sex comedy EuroTrip, she co-starred with Zac Efron and Leslie Mann 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 per cent 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 (2009–2010) opposite Taylor Schilling. More recently, she hosted the true-crime docuseries Meet, Marry, Murder on Tubi.
