Cross Reference--When Anthony Stewart Head Meets Rupert Giles, British Charm and Open Minds Prevail
Maybe it's the accent. Speaking the King's English as he does, using terms like tube instead of subway, and swish to describe a new pair of shoes, and argy-bargy which means--well, nobody's too sure what the means, but Anthony Stewart Head still sounds cool when he says it. But when the actor cracks an easy smile, chuckles a little and slips into a southern drawl as he explains that he'd never once considered librarianism as a way of life, it's clear that there's much more to this guy than books.
"It takes me a long time to read any kind of book," Head admits. "I never read."
Gasp!
"I am not remotely like Giles, and it comes as a shock to some journalists," he says. "They really think I'm this sad, lonely, boring librarian--I'm a bit funkier than Giles."
Funky or not, it still doesn't help his street cred that he's become so well-known for wearing tweed, spectacles and a furrowed brow. But for Head, that's precisely what makes the role fun for him to play.
"It's interesting. I've spent most of my career playing bad guys, these smiling villains. Then when I did some commercials, I got this soft, spongy image; sort of the smooth guy," Head says. "Then all of a sudden I got [Giles], which is a radical change. What's fascinating about the job is that you get to develop the character; each season, there's been a change. He doesn't stand still."
And neither does Head. After striking a nerve as the debonair love interest of a newly divorced woman in a tremendously popular commercial for Taster's Choice coffee, Head became so popular that he suffered a backlash from the British entertainment industry, prompting him to pack his bags and come to the United States five years ago.
"The commercial was killing me in terms of film and TV. They have a very different attitude in England than they do over here. Here, fame is cool--however you've got it, it's marketable, bankable. In England, it's like, 'This is serious drama'--they don't want people reaching for their coffee jars. I'm still known as 'Mr. Coffee Guy' in England," he adds.
Luckily, not everyone in his native country drinks coffee, and Head was able to continue working on stage where he made a great departure--perhaps the greatest departure possible--not only from his commercial persona, but from Giles and any other character he's ever played. Donning a pair of fishnets, he reprised a classic role which his fellow countryman Tim Curry made famous: The Rocky Horror Show's sweet transvestite, Dr. Frank N. Furter.
"My Frank was a little more demonic, a little bit meaner and madder than Tim Curry's. He was something to be reckoned with," Head says proudly. "I have a big following of Rocky Horror fans in England. They liked it very much. Some dinkum I read on the internet the other day was saying, 'Shock! Horror! Anthony Head played Frank N. Furter!' He said that I was a great actor, but wouldn't I be better cast as Brad or the Narrator? I said, 'Excuse me! I am not Giles! Giles is a character that I play!"
Even without a mug of joe in hand or flashy pumps on his feet, it didn't take long for Head to get an agent in the States and begin landing parts in television and movies. Perhaps the key to his success may be his ability to balance talent and charm with humor and humility and translate it to the camera.
"The bottom line is that I think almost anyone can act, and I'm very lucky to get paid what I get paid to do what I like doing," he says. "I don't think actors are particularly special. I suppose not everybody has the bottle to get up and do what we do--but at the same time, I think it's a very short distance between actors and someone who, say, puts on a 'brave face' to get through some life crisis."
He also thrives on the feeling of excitement that he gets from performing.
"Someone said last night, don't I get nervous?" he says. "Yeah, there are times when I get nervous, but that's cool. That's the buzz. That's part of the adrenaline thing. You go, 'Whoa--this is a funky feeling. I've never felt this before. Let's do this again.'"
Where Head was, well, headed in life became obvious early. As the lead in The Emperor's New Clothes (on a stage at his neighbor's house at the age of six), he grew attached to the applause, but even before that, he developed a reputation for his meticulous scene preparation, even when no one would be watching.
"My friends actually got kinda bored with me when we were playing soldiers and stuff, because I'd always turn it into a scene and rehearse it," he recalls. "I remember being up in my bedroom and we did a scene of the border crossing. God knows how old I was. This poor long-suffering friend of mine was saying, 'Can't we just go out and play war or something?' And I was like, no, we've gotta get this right."
Head's energies became even more focused on theater in high school, where he began to get serious about pursuing acting as a career by performing in, writing and directing plays.
"Thank God it was an artistic school," says Head. "I was able to sort of do my thing and excel at what I do, which is...er, acting."
From there, Head auditioned for the prestigious National Youth Theatre in London, but didn't get in. He later tried to enroll in Central School, a drama school, where he was encouraged to get more experience before planning on studying there.
"I went away and worked in an editing room for about a year, then came back to do some youth theater at Thorndyke Theater in Leatherhead. My director said it was time to go to drama school, so I did."
Now many years later, Head finds himself well into his third season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where he is finding the adrenaline rush on a weekly basis--probably more than he bargained for. While Giles began as more of a bookish bystander, the Watcher has gradually become a Do-er.
"In the first season they were forever knocking me out--I got knocked out in virtually every episode," he says with a laugh. "'What can we do with Giles? Oh, let's knock him out.' Gradually, as he's become more acquainted with the reality of his job, he's a little more comfortable with hitting people and being hit."
Sarah Michelle Gellar, perhaps more than anyone, may have helped him get used to being hit when she, as Buffy, would use him as a punching bag when practicing her fighting form.
"I've come out with a few bruises," Head admits. "She hits quite hard, actually. It's the arms that get most of it. But that's fun, because then you don't have to act. It's real."
With Eliza Dushku's debut as Faith the Vampire Slayer, however, Buffy will now be able to pick on someone her own size.
"[Buffy and Faith] did have a sparring session in the library. It was originally going to include me sandwiched between them being beaten to a pulp. But we've done that gag, really, so I was written out of it," he says. "Just to have my presence felt, however, we did a piece with me wandering about in the background trying to find a place to put a new coat stand."
A new coat stand isn't the only change in Giles this season. Astute viewers will notice that he's dressing a little sharper and is much less likely to take any lip from people--especially when it comes to dealing with Snyder.
"This season, let's just say there's a slight change of image; he's always been a bit soft and wooley, and so much happened to him at the end of last season, I wanted to get a feel like, 'Okay, enough messing; you're not gonna hurt me again like you did.' I'm presenting the world with a new, sharper self. Don't mess with Giles," Head warns. "There's an edge to him."
The changes in Giles, however, are not random. Series creator Joss Whedon has pushed his librarian to the edge by killing off his girlfriend, Jenny Calendar, and he's left many questions unanswered about Giles' "Ripper" past. Head has a lot to say on the subject of the recent trials by fire which his character has been put through on the show.
"It's just that when you've been hurt--and by the end of the season, not only was Giles tortured, but they were screwin' with his brain, makin' me think that Jenny was there," he says, slipping back into his twang. "It's that thing of feeling different inside and presenting a different image to the world."
"Joss is so fine-tuned to what we're playing, and the ways we can change and we've evolved," Head adds. "There's a kind of symbiotic relationship between the writers and ourselves, so that it never stands still. Look at [the cast] from the beginning of the series, how we've evolved and grown and changed, and how the experiences we've had on the show have been brought into play and developed. It gives us a lot to work with--big thumbs-up."
The question of whether Giles' new attitude will translate to new love remains to be seen. And despite an episode six dalliance with Joyce Summers which he says is sure to yield long-term repercussions, don't expect Buffy to be calling Giles "Dad" any time soon.
The father of two daughters, Head cringes at the thought. "Ooooh. I don't think that's a very good idea. Whatever Joss sets up is certainly in order to present conflicts, but I think there would be a serious conflict of interest if Giles was her stepfather. I don't think I could, as a stepfather, in all conscience send her out to meet vampires. That's too horrible. I don't think that would work."
Despite their differences, perhaps the most telling connection to where the worlds of Head and Giles do begin to cross is in their openness to unconventional ideas, specifically their belief in the supernatural. He and his girlfriend hang crystals and wind chimes in his apartment to keep the energy flowing, they have a good friend who is a medium, and he even says there is a spirit living in his home in England.
"It's difficult to get into, because people think it's sort of odd," he says shyly. "We all have the ability to communicate psychically, but we close ourselves down by asking too many questions. Too much suspicion--we're too ready to be a skeptic. I like to have an open mind until something is proven otherwise."
Head also shows his spiritual side at work. In a Native American tradition called "smudging," he burns sage to keep the right kind of energy flowing and figuratively clear the air in the cramped library set, where so many of his scenes are shot. The process was also shown on camera in the episode "Becoming" during the ceremony to restore Angel's soul.
"Everyone's going to think I'm batty," Head says with a laugh, "but although it's very beautiful, the library's a very difficult space to film in sometimes. We always end up in the middle, because that's where the camera fits, and because a lot of my stuff is in there, we'll have a solid day or two back-to-back in the library and grind into the ground; it's like, let's get outta here. Alyson [Hannigan] said we should smudge some in there, so we did. The next couple of times we were in there, everything was great. Shots were all coming together and going very quickly. It was very strange, very odd. I think it's time to smudge again."
Admittedly, Head's openness also tends to make him a little twitchy during shoots dealing heavily with the supernatural, demons and various darker aspects of the occult. He has enough faith in the reality of the beyond that he cautions against carelessly tampering with forces that lie largely beyond the realm of human understanding.
"I'm a firm believer in stuff like that. When people mention stuff like a ouija board, I always say no, don't go there," he says. "If you invite them into your house, you can't necessarily just ask them to go. Well, you can ask them, but what's to say they're gonna listen to you? I have had enough experience of my own to know there is a spirit world. As for the show, I have to believe in what I say, because I'm an actor, and it's my job to make it real."
Spoken like a true Watcher.
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Page created January 1999. Original material © Betsy Vera (bentley@umich.edu). This website is for information and entertainment purposes only and is not intended to infringe on copyrights held by others.
