Another actor from Buffy the Vampire Slayer has died. What's going on?
Anthony Head, Buffy and Ted Lasso star, dies at 72
The actor died due to complications from pnemonia, according to his daughters.
Anthony Head, known for playing Rupert Giles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has died at 72. The news was confirmed by his family members, who shared a statement to media outlets.
"He passed away peacefully of complications due to pneumonia, surrounded by his family," Head's daughters, Emily and Daisy, said in a statement shared with the BBC.
"It has been, and forever will be, an honour and a privilege to be his daughters, and to have witnessed firsthand the impact both he and his work have had on so many," they added.
Entertainment Weekly has reached out to Head's reps for additional comment.
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Born on Feb. 20, 1954, in Camden Town, London, Head grew up in a family that worked in the entertainment industry. His father, Seafield Laurence Stewart Murray Head, was a documentary filmmaker, and his mother, Helen Shingler, was a film and TV actress. His brother, Murray Head, is also an actor and singer. Head began his career by acting in several musicals, including a West End revival of The Rocky Horror Show in 1990, in which he played Frank N. Furter.
His big break came in 1997 when he took on the role of Rupert Giles on Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series, which is based on Whedon's 1992 film of the same name. While working as the librarian at her school, Giles becomes a mentor to Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) as her Watcher. The show ran for seven seasons, but Head was only a guest star in the last two seasons.
In 2020, Head started recurring on Apple TV's Ted Lasso, as Rupert Mannion, the ex-husband of Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham). Bill Lawrence told EW at the time that naming the character Rupert, like his Buffy character, was a coincidence.
"We thought he would be great, playing a little against type as a truly villainous, reprehensible character that you would still believe could charm people," Lawrence said.
Head also appeared on several other TV shows throughout his career, including Merlin, Motherland, and Jack Ryan. His last credited film role was in the 2024 Prime Video rom-com Upgraded.
Sarah Fisher, Head's longtime partner and the mother of the couple's daughters, died in December 2025.
The Buffy cast has been hit with a wave of tragedies over the past couple of years. Nicholas Brendon, who played Xander on the supernatural drama, died in March at 54. Michelle Trachtenberg, who played Buffy's sister Dawn, died in February 2025 at 39.
"This business is very tough, and we've had — it feels like we've had more tragedy than other shows," Gellar said at an event earlier this year.
Anthony Head, Buffy’s Watcher and a ‘Ted Lasso’ Heel, Dies at 72
The British actor was a mainstay of influential television shows who first found fame as a Nescafe pitchman.
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.”
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- Days ago: MOM = 3992 days ago & DAD = 646 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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