Actor Looks Out For Buffy, Charity.
23 October 1998, by Mark S. Del Vecchio
Anthony Stewart Head likes to watch.
Wait. No. Nothing perverse. It's his job. He's The Watcher.
On Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the WB network's biggest hit, Head portrays Rupert Giles, the librarian/researcher/ mythologist whose assignment in life is to watch over a high school girl who kills the undead for a living.
As her Watcher, Giles is Buffy's teacher, mentor, researcher, adviser. He's also her taskmaster and shoulder to cry on when the pressures of high school -- and vampire slaying -- seem overwhelming to a 16-year-old.
Head describes the relationship between The Watcher and The Slayer as "very complex."
"It's also constantly changing as different conflicts between them come up and it's great fun to play because of that. It isn't just surrogate father-daughter, it's not a teacher-student," he said, struggling to explain the many bonds between the two characters.
Hip Humor, Action Make For A Killer Blend
"It's very difficult to encapsulate in words. I suppose it's 'mentor.' There's no doubt that Buffy respects Giles and he respects her. It's a fascinating relationship. It's one of the successes of the show."
As his real self, Head takes time for charity work. This weekend, Head will be the grand marshal for AIDSWALK '98: The Hartford Halloween Parade to Benefit AIDS Project Hartford. The costumed parade begins Sunday at 11 a.m. at The Hartford Financial Services Group on Asylum Avenue and ends with an awards ceremony at the pavilion stage at Bushnell Park.
"I've done a fair amount of work in England with The Terrence Higgins Trust, the main body that's involved with AIDS awareness," Head said. "It's good to put a recognizable face on it, it brings people's attention back to it. It's too easy to put it in the backs of our minds but it's still there and very much a part of some people's lives."
Before taking up his post as Watcher in the Sunnydale High School Library, Head was best known as the romantic guy next door in a famous series of Taster's Choice coffee commercials that ran longer than some network offerings.
Unlike other celebrities who may want fans to forget their commercials past, Head is proud of his work in a series of ads that is now studied by marketing majors.
Watch The Watcher
"The coffee thing will go on forever -- it's there. It's part of my history," he said in a telephone interview from his home in Santa Monica, Calif. "The bottom line is that I don't really care what I'm known for. A nice piece of work. In terms of acting, it was good."
Trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, Head is an accomplished stage and screen actor who starred in the short-lived sci-fi series VR-5 and appeared in the films A Prayer for the Dying and Lady Chatterley's Lover. He's also played Jesus in Godspell on London's West End and Dr. Frank N. Furter (tights, feather boa and all) in the stage musical The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
"Giles is such a departure from my norm -- the me that is me -- that when I originally took it I thought, 'here's a nice chance to play a character [who is] quite a way from me,' " he said. "And yes, Frank [N. Furter] is quite a way from me, too," he added with a laugh.
"I was surprised when people raised eyebrows when I turned up for things and say, 'You're not Giles.' I'm not the mild-mannered man in tweed they expected," he said.
Born in Camdentown, England, Head now divides his time between his homeland -- where he and his partner of 16 years raise their two daughters -- and a home in Santa Monica where he spends eight or nine months a year during the filming season.
"It's fine apart from the fact that I really miss my family. The work is here and that's ... well, how can I complain? It's an extremely good series that happens to be very successful and it's here to boot," Head said of his bi-continental lifestyle.
As Giles, he has another family to look out for: a 16-year-old girl chosen to be Good's main defense against vampiric Evil, and her wisecracking and talented friends Xander, Cordelia and Willow.
Giles is the "grown-up" presiding over the Slayerettes. He is the one who leads, researches, finds the answers, keeps the Slayer on course and provides strong support in times of trouble. It's the human troubles that surround the group and how it deals with them that have earned the show critical praise and a strong fan following -- among teens and adults.
"I think it's because it touches on human psyche. It is cool: It's got very cool music, extremely allegorical symbolism inasmuch as most of the tales have some footing in some life problems that we all go through," he said.
Though the show is still seen by many as a teen phenomenon, the tweeded Giles, almost as much as the fashion-hip Buffy, has inspired his own fan clubs, both on-line and off-line.
"I think Tony is a really excellent actor. He can say more with just a look and a smile than a lot of actors can portray with words. He conveys so much feeling in what he does," said Sonja Marie Isaacs, 25, president of GASP!, the Giles' Appreciation Society Panters.
The on-line group, which currently has nearly 400 members, is free to join and is located at /www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/7728/gaspers.html.
Isaacs also runs The Anthony Stewart Head Fan Club, which costs $18 a year to join. The latter has more than 60 members and provides an autographed photo of Head, a newsletter subscription and an official membership card.
Rhode Island resident Rebecca Dorrie, 41, is one of more than two dozen Head fans -- all known to each other through the group -- who will be traveling to Hartford this weekend to march in the parade and to see Head, who also is slated to do a book-signing at Borders Books & Music in Farmington from 8 to 9 p.m. Saturday.
"There's so much in the gestures, the looks, it's a classic example of acting," Dorrie said. "There's always little details with Giles, so many human little things."
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Hip Humor, Action Make For A Killer Blend.
23 October 1998, by Mark S. Del Vecchio
Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yeah. The name sort of puts people off. A Valley Girl who kills bloodsuckers. Right.
But writer Joss Whedon, Wesleyan grad and Academy Award nominee (Toy Story), has taken what sounds like a silly premise and turned it into an action-filled, dramatic fun-ride that has quickly become a fan favorite, inspiring Web sites, fan clubs, books, trading cards and even a line of clothing.
"Joss saw that you could have witty, biting humor and horror at the same time. The popular ethos has been that if it's horror, it has to be schlocky, it has to be camp humor," said Anthony Stewart Head, who plays the bespectacled Rupert Giles, Buffy's "Watcher" on the WB-TV series.
"The series doesn't; there are several different levels of humor and each character has a different contribution to make as far as the humor is concerned," he said this week.
Buffy: Vampires are creeps.
Giles: Yes, that's why one slays them.
The character made her debut in a 1992 movie starring Luke Perry and Kristy Swanson as Buffy. It wasn't an overwhelming success, and its broader humor and lack of drama can leave series fans groaning.
The series, now in its third season, tells the story of The Slayer, "one girl, in all the world, a Chosen One" imbued with special abilities and a duty to kill as many vampires as possible and to make the world safe for warm-blooded beings like us.
Buffy Summers as played by Sarah Michelle Gellar is a typical parent-hassled, pop quiz-hating 16-year-old with the added problem that her Friday nights out are complicated by vampires, snake-men, mummy girls and werewolves.
Giles: Buffy, when I said you could slay vampires and have a social life, I didn't mean at the same time!
Add in a boyfriend who's a vampire, a passel of friends who fight alongside her, and some of the wittiest writing in television, and you have a fun combination of X-Files meets 90210, Scooby Doo meets Romeo and Juliet.
But while comedic (and sharp) -- with the hippest music and musical guests on television, including Cibo Matto, Rasputina and Dashboard Prophets -- the series is about people, their triumphs and tragedies, and how they deal with those and one another.
Last season's major plot arc, for example, had Buffy's bloodsucking boyfriend losing his soul and conducting a campaign of terror against Buffy and her friends that culminated in the death of Giles' love interest, Jenny Calendar.
"I think the thing that is most remarkable about Joss [Whedon] is that he makes it extremely human. When the characters screw up, he makes the repercussions very human," Head said. "It's the sensitivity with which he writes the conflicts and the repercussions."
Buffy: Does it ever get easy?
Giles: You mean life?
Buffy: Yeah. Does it get easy?
Giles: What do you want me to say?
Buffy: Lie to me.
Giles: Yes. It's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true. The bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies . . . and everyone lives happily ever after.
Buffy: Liar.
It's the wry combinations -- love story and dramatic thriller, sharp comedy and pointy fangs, pop culture and gothic mythology -- that have made the show popular, and are turning it into an industry unto itself.
And if September is any indication, we could all be experiencing The Year of the Buffster. In one month, we saw:
Announcement of a spinoff WB series starring undead love interest Angel, slated for Season 2000.
Premiere of Dark Horse Comics' Buffy comic book.
Release by Inkworks of a trading card set that dealers say broke presale records.
Launch of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer Official Magazine" and fan club.
Purchase by Fox television of weekend rebroadcast rights beginning in fall 2001.
Publication of three books on the series, including the exhaustive "The Watchers Guide," by Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder.
Publication of the first original novel, "Children of the Night," by the same authors.
Release on video of the first six episodes of the series.
Announcement of a line of Buffy-like clothing.
The start of the third season of the adventures of Buffy and the Slayerettes (locally on WBNE, Channel 59, Tuesdays at 8 p.m.).
And word has it that toy action figures are on the way.
"That's cool," Head said. "I hope he has removable glasses."
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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.
