Anthony Head, the British actor who rose from the smooth 1980s pitchman for Nescafe Gold Blend instant coffee to become a mainstay performer on influential television shows like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Ted Lasso,” has died. He was 72.
The cause was “complications due to pneumonia,” his daughters, the actresses Emily Head and Daisy Head, said in a statement released to the BBC on Friday. The statement did not say where or when he died.
Mr. Head’s breakout came when he was cast as Rupert Giles in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the unexpected supernatural hit starring Sarah Michelle Gellar that ran from 1997 to 2003.
In the show, Giles was the fussy librarian at Sunnydale High School. But his real job was as Buffy’s “watcher,” appointed by a mysterious council to guide the young vampire slayer.
While auditioning for “Buffy,” Mr. Head pitched playing the role with the persona of Hugh Grant’s character in “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” Prince Charles or as Alan Rickman “in his more decisive moments,” Mr. Head said in a 2001 interview with The Evening Standard. Joss Whedon, the show’s creator, liked all of the ideas — so Giles became a combination of the three.
The nebbishy charm of the performance endeared Mr. Head to audiences.
“It opened the door to work internationally,” Mr. Head told the British tabloid Metro in 2013.
The coming decades would allow Mr. Head to show a wide range of performing abilities. That included a Tony Blair-inspired prime minister on the comedy series “Little Britain.” In one episode, Mr. Head wore a black pouch and wielded a feather duster.
“I did feel sorry for my children because they had to go into school the next day,” Mr. Head said in an interview with The Guardian in 2008.
Mr. Head noted the difference between the parts to Metro.
“They couldn’t be more different but it kept people guessing,” he said. “You can very easily get pigeonholed in this business. It afforded me massive amounts of choice in terms of what I’m asked to do.”
Additional roles included Uther Pendragon on “Merlin,” David Whele in the science fiction show “Dominion,” and Lord Sheffield on an episode of “Bridgerton.”
The most high profile recent role came when he landed a part on “Ted Lasso,” the Apple TV comedy that won legions of fans during the height of the pandemic. Mr. Head played the recurring character of Rupert Mannion, the smarmy former owner of A.F.C. Richmond, who lost the team to his ex-wife in a divorce.
“He’s a particularly unpleasant character and a complete narcissist, but you know where he’s coming from,” Mr. Head told The Guardian in 2021. “To make somebody believable, you have to see their point of view. You don’t need to like them, but you have to be on board with what’s driving them.”
Anthony Stewart Head was born on Feb. 20, 1954, in London. His mother, Helen Shingler, was best known for portraying Madame Maigret in the BBC detective series “Maigret” from 1960 to 1963. His father, Seafield Head, was a documentary filmmaker.
“People think that must have made it easier for me to become an actor, but actually, that’s nonsense,” Mr. Head told The Guardian in 2016. “My mother said, ‘Well, if you must.’ And my father said I needed to have a second string to my bow, so if I didn’t succeed at acting, I’d have something else I could do. Bless his heart, he was fairly controlling.”
His father did hire him to be an assistant editor on some projects as a teenager. Working in cutting rooms, Mr. Head recalled to The Guardian in 2021, “was fascinating.”
This is partly what led Mr. Head to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. One of his most formative experiences, he said, was seeing Tim Curry in the musical “The Rocky Horror Show” while in drama school as a teenager. He told The Guardian that it “ignited something in my core.”
“I knew I had acting in my blood because of my mother. Now I couldn’t wait to finish drama school and try to make it in the real world,” Mr. Head recalled.
Early in his career, Mr. Head starred in a West End revival of the musical “Godspell” in 1978, which led to bit parts in television shows.
But in the mid-1980s Mr. Head won fans for several years as the centerpiece of a campaign by the instant coffee brand Nescafe, alongside the actress Sharon Maughan. He recalled that role, at first, may have stopped him getting more satisfying acting parts.
“I don’t think I was tainted by it but my agent did say someone had said: ‘This is a serious drama. We don’t want people reaching for their coffee jars,’” Mr. Head told The Guardian in 2001. “But America is less snobbish about commercials.”
His brother is the actor Murray Head, who played Bob Elkin in the 1971 Oscar-nominated film “Sunday Bloody Sunday.”
Mr. Head’s longtime partner, Sarah Fisher, an animal-rights activist, died last year. Both of their daughters, Emily Head and Daisy Head, are also actors. In the 2008 mini-series “The Invisibles,” Mr. Head performed alongside Emily, his eldest daughter.
“For an actor it’s a real joy for the emotions you are feeling to be real. You are not having to think,” Mr. Head recalled to The Guardian in the 2008 interview. “I’ve got these great scenes when Emily starts to twig who I am. I’d look into her eyes and I’d start to well up.”
Sopan Deb is a Times reporter covering breaking news and culture.
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