Head Start, by Cynthia Boris. Issue 40.
He slays vampires by night, he's been seen in fishnets and high heels, and he makes a mean cup of instant coffee. He's Anthony Stewart Head, formerly known as "the Gold Blend man" and more recently as Rupert Giles, the Watcher in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Head's career has spanned movies, television and the British stage. He has the distinction of being the "hottest" Frank N Furter in The Rocky Horror Show, (thus the fishnets and high heels) and is the creator and composer of D'Ark Secrets, a musical that's not for the kiddies.
His latest venture is leading him to the limelight once more. Head plays Rupert Giles, school librarian and Watcher. It is his sacred duty to protect and train the Slayer; the one girl in all the world with the skill to hunt and kill the vampires. Week after week, Giles consults his books to help destroy whatever new evil has found its way to Sunnydale. On camera you'll find Head in tweed, his speech stuttery and his social skills lacking. Off camera he's a whole different animal. His manner is relaxed and comfortable; as he speaks he switches accents like characters and he hardly seems the most obvious choice for the bookish Englishman.
"What can I say?" says Head with a smile. "It attracted me as an Englishman abroad. I get all kinds of scripts; some of which appeal, and some of which kind of loosely appeal and some that don't appeal at all. This one I was reading in a restaurant and just laughing out loud. I thought this has to be something good. I loved the concept."
Buffy the Vampire Slayer has given the actor plenty of scope to avoid presenting Giles as typical English stereotype, nevertheless he's very well aware of the dangers of being typecast in such as a way. "I think English people have a set pattern of how we are perceived by Americans. We are always cast as bad guys or the stupid stiff upper lip guy. I think the bad guy thing comes from the fact that we're fairly inscrutable, so you can't figure out where the English are coming from."
But Giles is definitely not the bad guy. Head has very specific ideas of his character's origins. "Giles bumbles through life. But I have a feeling that he comes from a long line of Watchers. He knows what he knows but I think this is the first time his family has seen action. He found his way to Sunnydale, because that was in his destiny but he had no idea he was going to meet up with a real Slayer. He knows it's locked in the stars but when he actually meets Buffy and it starts to get a bit nasty it's like 'Oh no! What do I do now?'"
The supernatural horrors that Giles has to face, however, are nothing compared to dealing with the teenage Slayer and her "Slayerettes." A problem Head has managed to deal with by virtue of his theatrical experience where he mastered his range of withering glances.
"I developed the look when I was doing Rocky Horror on stage in England. The thing that's exciting about the live show is that you never know what's going to happen. The audience is not allowed to throw things, because a few people got injured early on, like they got hit in the eye with chocolate bars, but they do shout things and it's Frank's job to put them down. My mistake early on was that I answered everything and the show ran for hours and people kind of lot the plot...not that there is an enormous amount of plot to begin with...but I had to learn to field heckled with a look. And that was extraordinarily empowering. We had a big auditorium, like 1,500 to 2,000 seats and I could put someone down in the back of the balcony just by looking at them. It was great fun; they'd shut right up."
Frank is a pretty wild character, and a million miles from the reserved Watcher. "He's a dirty little soul. And I'm fairly wicked as Frank. There was a friend of ours from Bath, a very down-to-earth, forthright girl, who knows me very well. She couldn't talk to me. She came backstage to the dressing room and could not talk to me until I took of the make-up. Her jaw dropped to the floor when she first saw me, and she kept saying, 'But you're such a nice man!' People come out of Rocky Horror going, 'Wow, I don't feel so hung up anymore about whatever my hang-ups are!'"
And would such a hang-up exist regarding fan suggestions of a romantic entanglement between Giles and Buffy? "I think I would be arrested!" Head replies, explaining that early on it was a concern. "In the beginning the question was there. The moral police used to measure the space between me and Sarah (Buffy actress Sarah Michelle Gellar).Now, our relationship is established. It's much more father and daughter, or uncle and niece. It's something that really shouldn't cross anybody's mind."
Regardless, his female fans consider Giles to be very sexy. "I don't play him that way. He started off as a cross between Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. He's developed since then, because we found out he has that darker side. What's sexy about Giles? I guess he's human. He's a bit...um...he's not cuddly is he? He is deeply intelligent. A lot of people ask me, are you like Giles? Uh, no. Not an enormous amount; I'm not very intelligent, don't read a lot and don't stammer."
Not that Head's a stranger to being thought of as a sex symbol. Besides his outrageous performance in Rocky Horror he's also been the archetypal romantic stereotype in the famous coffee ads. "When they put my picture up in the office some of the girls went 'You're the Taster's Choice guy!' They found it extremely funny. The producers didn't cast me because of it, but I wouldn't be here if it hadn't been for that. People say, 'Wow you must have made a packet out of the coffee ads.' What it did give me, which most actors in England dream about, is the capacity to pick and choose what I want, and not have to take something just for the money. Theatre in England is notoriously badly paid. You can't support a family on it. So, I was able to do some really worthwhile projects and it meant I fell back on commercial money."
Head's experience is, perhaps, something that separates him from his fellow cast members who are, including Giles' love interest Ms Calendar, all under 25 years old. "It's fine," insists Head. "They look to me because I'm older, and I've never been the wise one before! No, actually we all get on extremely well and I don't think anyone thinks of me as old and wise. Though I do have a different way of working. They sometimes say I'm a method actor. And I say, I'm not exactly method but if I'm supposed to have a fight, I'd rather get on the floor and roll around and get myself dusted down than to have someone come over and dust me with a bucket. Alyson [co-star Hannigan, who plays Willow] still won't let me live down the time she started to pick some fluff off my jacket and I said 'Stop that! What are you doing? Get off. I rolled around on the floor to get this, excuse me!'"
Buffy the Vampire Slayer wasn't Anthony Stewart Head's first genre show. Shortly after the coffee ads brought him fame in the States he won the role of Oliver Sampson in the cyber-tech series VR.5. An experience that could often be a little confusing.
"Sometimes we didn't know what was going to happen until the day we were shooting. Which was one of their problems. VR.5 had such inventive scripts and they would have to go back to the network, and the network would send them back--'we don't understand this'--so sometimes we literally didn't get the pages until we were going down to the set. Which made planning difficult, but it was a great series and great fun. It was the first time I've ever encountered a running character that completely changed. He started off with one agenda and suddenly became fleshed out, it was great. Oliver had to conform to what the corporate body [The Committee] commands and initially you go along with it because that's the life you know, that's all you know. But gradually, when you see what they're doing to somebody, you start to question it, and you become an outcast yourself and very alone. Even more alone than the person you're looking after. I'm sad it didn't continue because Oliver and Sydney's story was just beginning. They really didn't start to understand or appreciate each other until the end, and it was going toward becoming them against the regime."
The show only lasted half a season, but that did at least give Head a chance to do Buffy. The hugely entertaining Horror series has kept him busy since then along with his many other hobbies and projects. "I love writing music. I have a studio at home in England and I've been writing a musical--forever. It's called D'Ark Secrets. I was thinking stage but we're starting to talk about animation and we've got something going. To say it's an adult musical is kind of limiting its appeal but I wanted to write something I felt Rocky Horror provides. It doesn't talk down to its audience and it doesn't plagiarize. There's so much out there that is the same old thing. It's Gothic and dark, producers I've been talking to have said, 'it's surprisingly dark. I didn't know you were that dark.' Yep, I am."
"Darkness" is an issue that is all too appropriate as Buffy arrives on British terrestrial TV. Given a remarkable early timeslot considering some of its graphic content, some fans fear that it will be cut.
"The British have a different view of sex and violence on television. In a way I was surprised, when I first came to the US, at the polarity between what is allowed in blue movies. The stuff that gets shown on cable here would not be allowed in England. The government got very uptight a while back when satellite came in. They got very panicky about people receiving stuff from Europe and from Denmark or Italy and were talking about jamming signals--that degree of censorship. I found it extraordinary; you're opening yourself up to the world with satellites, but you're gonna block it. Excuse me, how much am I paying for this? At the same time what is allowable on mainstream TV is generally more liberal. You can see some nudity, they just get a bit uppity about violence. But of the two societies, the English society is not really less violent, just discernibly less violent because people don't' have guns. But they still do pretty nasty things to each other. When there's a will there's a way."
So, aside from Buffy, his musical, and family commitments, what else is on the agenda? "I'd love to do more movies. I love the genre and I've always been a keen movie-goer. But I always seem to miss them and only see them on the plane on a small screen. I'd definitely do more theatre. All in all, I've been very lucky. Whenever I've felt the need to do film, or a musical, or straight theatre, the right thing has presented itself. Really, I can't thank Fate enough for putting me once again in a situation where I get to strut my stuff."
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A Virtual Gentleman - Anthony Head says goodbye to his 'nice guy' image in VR.5, by Mike Thomas. Issue 2.
Best known to television viewers as the smooth-talking, caffeine guzzling neighbour in the long-running Nescafe Gold Blend and Taster's Choice coffee adverts, British actor Anthony Head is playing another charmer, Oliver Sampson, in the cyberspace thriller series VR.5. However, unlike the commercials, Head's virtual smoothie represents a mysterious and possibly evil super corporation known as The Committee - and he's not much of a coffee drinker!
Born on February 20th in Camden Town, North London, Head trained at the London Academy of Dramatic Arts before launching his acting career in a stage production of Godspell. During the past twenty years, he has built an extensive list of stage and screen credits, including Yonadab, The Prince of Hamburg, Chess, Lady Windermere's Fan and Royce. He also became something of a cult figure in Britain thanks to the notoriously popular Nescafe Gold Blend coffee adverts, which were subsequently reshot to promote Taster's Choice coffee in America. Today, Head divides his time between his apartment in Los Angeles and his home in Somerset, England. He lives with his long-time companion, Sarah, and their two daughters, Emily Rose and Daisy May.
In 1993, the actor made his first foray into the realm of cult television with a first season episode of Highlander: the Series entitled "Nowhere to Run," in which he played Allan Rothwood, a diplomat whose son Mark .... is accused of raping Lori Bellian. .....Mark exploits his father's diplomatic immunity to escape the charge, forcing Lori's immortal stepfather .... to take the law into his own hands. Duncan MacLeod ... Tessa Noel ... and Richie Ryan ... are visiting the Rothwood Chateau when the notorious mercenary attacks the house with an army of trained killers at his disposal. During the 35 minutes of wall-to-wall violence which follows, MacLeod's group overcome the trained killers in a series of scenes which would make the likes of Quentin Tarentino and John Woo wince.
Head's latest series, VR.5, toplines Lori Singer ... as Sydney Bloom, a brilliant computer hacker who inadvertently enters the highest form of virtual reality, VR.5. Once there, Sydney can enter and affect the unconscious minds of others; she can explore and enter dreams, memories and thoughts, thus affecting their real-life behaviour ...
... Against her better judgement, Sydney is enlisted to complete difficult and often dangerous assignments with VR.5. The Committee is initially represented by Dr Frank Morgan ... a professor of virtual philosophy, who becomes Sydney's advisor and technical confidant. However, Morgan is soon killed to make way for Anthony Head's character, the cold and calculating Oliver Sampson. Although there is an element of attraction between Sydney and Sampson, it is unclear what his motives are or how much she can trust him, if at all.
Cult Times spoke to Anthony Head while he was shooting the final episode of VR.5's first season. Since our interview, it has been announced that Fox will not be renewing the visually stunning but hopelessly complicated Sci-Fi series for a second year.
Did you enjoy working on Highlander?
Yes, it was a good gig. What was fascinating for me was that I had to play older; the character had a 25-year-old son, so he must have been in his mid-to-late-forties, which is a bit older than I actually am. I had to play up, which is something you don't normally get a chance to do. It was also interesting because the director, Dennis Berry, tried a lot of different shots and liked to film everything in one take - he did things like shooting your close-ups actually during the scene. Some of it works and some of it doesn't, but it was very interesting to do.
Highlander is widely regarded as the world's most violent tv show, and "Nowhere to Run" must be one of its most violent episodes ...
It was a bit graphic, I must admit. A lot of it wasn't in the script. Once we got in there, Dennis kept suggesting and adding things and all these little bits got in there. He has tremendous energy and suddenly it was like he was unleashed. They were all his ideas.
... I think it's fair to say that a lot of people were shocked by the violence in "Nowhere to Run" ...
I can imagine. Personally I was shocked that my character was shot with a machine gun, had five bullet holes across the chest and survived!
You spent eight days in Paris working on the episode. Did you develop a good rapport with the show's cast?
Yeah, they're a good group and they have fun. Adrian Paul's very talented and does a good job. I had a good rapport with Alexandra Vandernoot, I thought she was a great girl, and Stan Kirsch was very sweet. I also got very close to Peter Guinness, who played the girl's father.
Turning to VR.5, do you think that the Gold Blend ... adverts played a part in your casting as Oliver Sampson?
They didn't seem to play a big part, they always seemed to be rather incidental. The producers had my [promotional] tape, but they weren't on it. When they came up in the conversation, the producers would take the attitude that I had them behind me *as well* as my other work. They could see Oliver's charm in the adverts, but they couldn't see the danger of the character. Actually, my casting might have had more to do with a movie I did over here with Jim Bellushi called Royce, where I played the psychopath. Mix that with the adverts and you've kind of got Oliver Sampson.
You mention that the coffee adverts aren't on your tape. Is that because you're trying to distance yourself from them?
No. It's just that although they're drama, and its a part like anything else, to me they don't have a place on my tape. I tried. I did have one on my last tape, but when I viewed it again, it didn't feel right; the adverts have a different texture, you're selling a product. It's difficult to explain but it wasn't a question of removing myself from them, they just didn't feel right on the tape.
If someone asked me for a collection of them, I could give all the adverts to them quite happily. But I've got plenty of work that I've done in England and in America that come together much better - actually, I'm now in a situation where I have more material than I know what to do with!
VR.5 is your first science fiction show. What do you like about it?
I like the way that it's not formula and its not ridiculous. The scripts are seriously whacky - it's like 'Whoa, where did that come from?' - but at the same time it's not sci-fi like such series as TekWar; it's only sci-fi because this form of virtual reality doesn't exist yet, but given the growth in technology, it's not inconceivable. Built on that, there's a fascinating mystery-drama story of Sydney Bloom trying to find her roots, and trying to find out what's happened to her father. I represent an extremely powerful and well financed organisation called The Committee who want to utilize her talent, so I'm sent in to get her to do things by offering her snippets of information. So I'm a manipulator basically.
It's fascinating tv. I guess it's like The Prisoner, The Avengers, Twin Peaks and Quantum Leap all mixed together, except that Quantum Leap became predictable. It was a great success but after a while you knew what was going to happen; he was going to leap into someone's body and the only thing that was fascinating was to find out what he had to find out about the person.
We've got people on this show who steer away from the obvious. For example, every time we have a fight we try to make it a struggle like a scuffle rather than an elaborately choreographed karate-fight. When I killed my first person, I broke his neck!
You described Oliver as a cross between that old smoothie in the coffee adverts and the psychopath in Royce. Now that sounds like a fun character to play ...
He is. Initially, he doesn't give much away, he's very closed off and is therefore extremely perplexing, but as time goes on, we learn more about him and his relationship with Sydney develops. Maybe it will turn into a romance, maybe it won't. Oliver's gullible, he doesn't know everything, he's more of a middle man between Sydney and The Committee and, at the end of the day, he can only tell her what he knows himself.
The show's special effects are said to be superb. What can you tell us about them?
Well, they've not done a lot of the post-production visuals, so it's not all computer effects; if they can do it in the lens, they do it. From that point of view, they just make graphic images on set; they colorize and play with them afterwards. It's great because the people who are in virtual reality can really feel that they are in it.
VR.5 is a high-concept and very complicated show; people who thought that the technobabble in Star Trek was bad haven't seen anything yet. Are you worried that viewers won't be able to understand the show?
No. I've heard from several people who have seen the pilot and say that it's fascinating because it does explain everything. A couple of people had said they didn't understand the concept of virtual reality and now they do because Sydney takes you through the stages of what we currently see as virtual reality to VR.5.
It's not hard to understand. Once you can accept that the brain is like another computer and therefore you can access what people are thinking without them knowing, then you've pretty much got it. The scripts get quite complex but they jump around. People didn't get bored with Twin Peaks until they figured out that they were never going to get a definite answer. VR.5 has a definite story and a definite answer.
What's the worst thing about making the show?
There's never enough time because they're being very ambitious about what they want to do and how much time we have to do it. It doesn't bother me, but I feel that I have left English tv behind, where they never have the budget or the time to do things, and now I'm here, where they have the budget but not the time, because they want to shoot as much as they can.
Are you contracted to star in VR.5 for a couple of years?
Oh yes, they don't make tv series over here without contracting you for at least five years. I'm down for five and they'll either do five or seven years. It's a bit odd because you sign the contract before you actually get the gig and you're left thinking 'Did I do the right thing?', but then you think 'Well I might not get it anyway'!
The general consensus is that VR.5 is either going to be a huge smash hit a la The X Files or a monumental failure. Do you have high hopes for the series?
Yes, obviously, but I'm a great believer now in what happens is meant to be. If it happens, it's because it's meant to be; if not, it's because either I'm not ready for it or I'm going to be doing something else or something along those lines.
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