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  • Talking Head, October 1999. Article by Dave Golder and Stephen O'Brien.


    Talking Head, October 1999, article by Dave Golder and Stephen O'Brien. Includes two sidebars: "Public not swayed by Head Music," and "Shaken, Not Stirred!"

    Tag line: He's gone from borrowing coffee from his next-door neighbour to fighting vampires in L.A. Dave Golder and Stephen O'Brien dine out with Anthony Head...

    Somehow, it seems immensely fitting that the man who plays Giles, the Watcher in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, should feel quite at home in a graveyard. As our photographer recces the area, Anthony Head leaps onto graves and peers at weather-worn inscriptions with the enthusiasm of a naughty schoolboy playing truant. "I don't mind being in a graveyard because I grew up next to one," he tells us from his position atop a large, altar-like tombstone. "We used to play in a graveyard, my brother Murray and me, and the other kids. There was some strange ritual... I can't quite remember... Something about if you touched a gravestone, you had to spit on your hands and do some ritual. So it obviously limited the amount of things you could do in a graveyard."

    Little did he suspect back then that nearly 40 years later, he would be one of the stars of a programme in which there are virtually no limits to what can happen in a graveyard. And it's a show the incredibly youthful-looking Head is clearly proud to be a part of. As he poses for the photo-shoot next to askew headstones in his black leather jacket, black shirt, black boots and black sunglasses -- looking less like the fusty, bookish Vampire trainer he plays in Buffy than ultra-cool, undead Angel's older brother -- he displays an almost aficionado knowledge of the show, dropping episode titles into the conversation like a fan at a convention and deploring the way the UK channels are handling the show.

    "They keep treating it like it's a teen show," he sighs, "but Warner have done research in the States, and it's the same over here... The BBC can't show season two until after Sky, you say? Oh that's absurd! Hey, you've got to get a shot of me on this one! This really is a great location... You know, when Sky first got Buffy, I offered my services for promotion, but they weren't interested. The mere fact it's managed to survive all that is a testament to its longevity. I mean, they did everything they could possibly want to do to bury it."

    This time around, it's the BBC who've organised this current round of promotional duties. Suddenly, Auntie has woken up to the fact that they may have a hit on their hands, and they're keen to plug season two, starting on BBC2 next month. Head is appreciative of all the fan support the show has had in his native UK, but, whispering conspiratorially from behind a particulary moss-encrusted tombstone, he reveals an extraordinary, X-Files-style conspiracy theory he's heard. "The BBC initially thought Murdoch was trying to pull a fast one on them, getting his minions on the net and sending them a lot of e-mails, pretending to be Buffy fans. But it was Buffy fans... The fanbase is extraordinary."

    And now Head, who spends the show's hiatus back in his native England, is more than happy to oblige in getting the show column inches. Watching him vamp it up among the headstone and weeds, you wonder if there's anything he won't do for the show.

    "Oh, I do draw the line," he grins mischievously. The Mirror sent out a photographer to Los Angeles who wanted me to wear a cape and false vampire teeth. Sorry, but no thanks."

    The photo-shoot complete, it's off to a restaurant for the main interview. His publicist tipped us off to book at a vegetarian restaurant. Head, it turns out, is a New Age Man. He talks persuasively and animatedly about the value of Chinese medicines, meditation and internal balance. And rarely has there been a better advert for "holistic medicines" as he calls them; it's difficult to believe this man is 45. Lean, lithe and alert, he exudes confidence and contentment balanced with a self-effacing charm which stops you from hating him for being so damned happy with life. Five minutes in his presence and you're contemplating giving up smoking, drinking, red meat and ozone-hostile hairspray and booking a three-month course in crystal visualisation.

    "My girlfriend, Sara, has always been very intuitive and very open," he says matter-of-factly, "and she's just grown my experiences in the last few years. We're not turning away from traditional medicine, but we're looking much more openly at alternatives. Because I don't see why we should put all our eggs in one basket. After all, western medicine has existed for a very short space of time, while herbal medicines have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. Well, hundreds. Thousands makes me sound like an idiot doesn't it? But there you do. I've just got a very open mind."

    Open enough, indeed, to believe his Somerset house is haunted. "It's a little girl who tends to gravitate towards shiny objects. She was a bit vociferous when we first moved in. And when we first started to do some redecorating, she banged about a bit, and made herself heard. But she's very warm, very welcoming when you go into the house. My parents were always very sceptical, but then we heard her one night and she was calling out for her mum. And we all heard it. We had a friend who actually saw her. She was accompanied by her nanny or something. And somebody showed us some photographs of the house--a local who lived in the village. They were early 1900s, and there was one with a picture of a little girl and a nanny at the front of the house. So it might be her."

    All of which seems to be perfect grounding for the role of Giles. "It certainly means that I don't shut my mind to some of the wilder ideas," he agrees, though he says his personal preoccupations rarely have a direct influence on his role. "There's only one episode, 'I Only Have Eyes For You,' which had things in the original draft that...well, its' the ony episode that's had things I've drawn exception to... But Joss (Whedon, Buffy's producer and creator) said, 'Oh alright,' and made some changes for me."

    Which, according to Head, is something that's not too common on the show.

    "I wouldn't say Joss is keen on you changing his words, but he allows one to do it. It used to be--and it's still the same to a certain extent but not quite so extreme as it used to be--that if you wanted to change an 'and" or a 'but,' you'd have to check it with Joss. But now, there is a trust that one isn't just changing it for the sake of changing it. And anyway, in my case at least, he writes English better than anyone I've ever known in America. Because he spent time in England. He went to school here for a while, and he had as bad a time at an English school as he did at an American school. It's great he did, otherwise non of us would be here. Certainly his school trauma has funded an awful lot of Buffy.

    Working in Hollywood has been Camden-born Head's ambition since the age of six, when he appeared in a school play and decided, "I like this. I want to do this. A lot." His ambition was also formed by the US shows he used to watch, which, at the time, he preferred to the English shows. "Oh, Rin Tin Tin," he enthuses without a hint of irony. "He was like an alsatian, a German Shepherd. Sort of like Lassie, but much cooler, because he hung out with Rusty, a kid in the cavalry. I used to go to my kids' playgroup dressed as Rusty. And Whirlybirds. Whirlybirds was cool. And they used to wear really cool pilot shades. They were way ahead of their time."

    "Cool" is a word Head uses a lot. It's almost his sole linguistic concession to his transatlantic career, sitting anachronistically alongside the more familiar Giles-like "one"-isms and "not awfully keen'"s; an affirmation that, despite the fact that he still mainly gets cast as Englishmen, he's arrived in the good old US of A. In fact, he maintains that most of his friends in Hollywood are Americans and he veers away from becoming emmeshed in an ex-pat Brit-pack clique.

    "I bump into a few of them. I went out there 16 or 17 years ago with a play which also featured Chris Neame. He stayed there and he married. I believe he was a close contender for Giles. He certainly went up for Giles; I met him at the audition. But most of my friends out there are American."

    He prefers instead to hang out with his Buffy co-stars."I'm great friends with Allyson,and Nicky, and Charisma. In fact--well, it happened less and less towards the end of this season--but we always used to go round each other's houses to see a new episode of Buffy. We often went round Joss's as well when it was one of his episodes. Then we would have a little party. Because that's the best way to watch Buffy, with lots of people. It happened less and less towards the end of the season because we kept missing them as we were working."

    You can tell that the phrase, "it's all like one big family" is just a platitude away. He smiles and shrugs in mock surrender. "It is. Well, it just is..." He adopts a cheesy American accent of pure Johnny Carson sincerity... "We all get on really well. It's amazing, really. Three years down the line and there are obviously egos, but they invariably keep remarkable control on them, and you can't get that number of people working together on a set without...well, you must know what it's like in any office. People have bad days. But it is like a family. It's also one the of the most hard-working, greatest crews in the world. It's just heads down and beaver away to the end. A few people have gone over to Angel, and it's sad to see them go. But ultimately it's a very talented bunch of people. I still look forward to it."

    Indeed, it was through the close-knit Buffy crew network that he first found out how popular the show had become. "In the first hiatus, I called Allyson (Hannigan) to see how she was doing and she said, 'Have you looked at the net?' and I thought, 'What?' And she said, 'Haven't you seen the websites?''No.' 'I'ts huge. and you've got your own. And it's huge!' And I went on the websites and it was wonderful."

    A similar thing happened when he found out about his third placing in the SFX Sexiest Men in SF poll. "Sarah (Michelle Gellar) rang me up from London when she was doing publicity for Cruel Intentions, and said she had just seen this magazine in which she'd been voted sexiest woman, and I was not far behind (David Boreanaz) who came top of the men's vote. I was immensely flattered. I beat Matt LeBlanc!"

    Top of page

    But Head should be used to being a heartthrob. He did, after all, star in one of the most famous series of TV ads of all time. Twice. Head was the male half of the Nescafe couple, which directly lead to him heading off to find fame and fortune in Hollywood. Because, after making 12 ads for British TV, he and his co-star, Sharon Maughan, were then invited over to America to reprise their roles in 13 more ads, Nescafe not being called Nescafe over there, but Taster's Choice.

    "Those commercials were extraordinary," Head reflects. "No one had ever seen anything like it before. But it petered out at the end. Nescafe didn't want to finish it really, but we thought enough's enough. It's just grinding on. It's not really going anywhere. And the guy that wrote it originally wanted us to literally drive off into the sunset, and I was hoping it'd be like the ending of Grease, with the car taking off.

    "And then they were completely totally remade for the US. The whole thing from beginning to end lasted about ten years. If you watch them back-to-back you see me age. Physically. My agent has a few on tape, and I did watch a few the other day. And I was just terrified. To see yourself ageing on screen--it's, 'Oh my god!' It must have been like that for the guys from Star Trek. Good wigs, though. Good wigs."

    Somewhat surprisingly, Head reveals that he and Maughan had to re-audition for the US ads. "Well yeah, because they wanted American actors. But in the end they tested on both sides of the Atlantic and came to the conclusion that the chemistry was 'what made it work'. Unfortunately, the chemistry was so strong, they couldn't remember what the commercial was for. They remembered me and her, but they didn't remember what the coffee was."

    "But the commercial was huge over there. So I went over there and got an agent on the first trip. I went a couple of more times before anything happened. The second time I went, I think, I got VR.5 and so then I did 12 episodes of that."

    Head played Oliver Sampson in the lamented 1995 virtual-reality thriller series, a victim of a US TV season in which you couldn't flick channels without some new SF show flaunting its CG at you. "I haven't seen it for a while," admits Head, "but my emories of it are that it was way ahead of its time. I think it was very cool. Unfortunately they just tried to get too clever with it. The network kept calling up saying, 'It's not obscure enough, we want more obscure stuff.' So that was why it ended up the way it did. They kept building in more twists and turns. But nobody had the faintest idea what was going on. Strangely enough Sliders stayed on air. And it was like...why?"

    So why does he reckon it was dropped, then? Was he hideously more expensive than John Rhys Davies?

    "Me? No!" he laughs. "Ultimately I think it was quite costly because it was done a lot on location."

    Head's next regular role in a US TV series was destined to last a bit longer: Giles, the Watcher, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Although he wasn't too sure about that when he did some research for the role. Having been sent the script, and loving it, he decided to watch the original movie. Bad idea.

    "It was nonsense. It wasn't at all what I'd expected. It's not funny in the same way at all. And I said to Joss Whedon just before I went in for my audition, 'I saw the film last night...'" he draws in his breath dramatically. "Basically the film was not what he wanted to make. He was 18, 20, something like that. He had absolutely no control, and, um, I mean it stands in its own right, but it's not what he set out to make. His contention was that you could be genuinely funny, you could be witty, and you could have horror, and you could have thrills, and you could have tears all at the same time. And no-one would believe him. It took him a long time to prove it. And now, of course, we look at Scream, and I Know What You Did Last Summer, all full of witty off-hand remarks. I just think Joss does it best, you know."

    In fact, right from the start, Whedon was open with Head, and the rest of the cast, about what would make the series sink or swim.

    "Well, when I first said to Joss, 'How do you think it's going to do?'" remembers Head, "he said, 'don't expect it to be an overnight success. The network don't get it, other people don't get it, but gradually they will, and through word of mouth...this isn't going to be sold by billboards and hoardings, this will be word of mouth.' And the number of adults in the States who come up to me and say, 'I know this is a kids' show, but somebody told me to watch it, and I can't stop now.' And it's like, 'It's alright, it's not a kids' show.' It appeals to kids, but there is no other show that appeals across the board like Buffy. It's extraordinary. I mean, I was talking to one of the producers and she told me a really well-known, high-flying exec in Hollywood called her up, and said, 'I'm just calling...I need to know what happened in Buffy last night. I missed it.' It's true."

    Giles was the first regular role cast in Buffy, and Head decided to base his performance, in part, on Hugh Grant. "I'd just seen Four Weddings and a Funeral and I thought, that sort of very shy, Hugh Grant-style would suit Giles... Not an idiot, you know, but when he's confronted by things that he doesn't understand he sort of goes into a humbling kind of state. But at the same time, my original premise was someone who is older than his years. He's spent so many years in books, he hasn't really lived. So he's a 50-year-old in a 40-year-old's body. But being around Buffy and experiencing what he experiences, he has become younger in his outlook, because of what he's learning and because he's had to make a lot of concessions. Because originally he was extremely entrenched and opinionated, and that's one thing you can't be in his job. That's one of things that makes it so much fun. Joss can take it in any direction. And after the unmentionable, unspeakable episode in season three, there's a distinct change in the way Giles feels about the world."

    The first year on the show, however, was a bit of a rocky time. Although an instant hit with the critics ("At the media launch critics were coming up to us and were just like all over us; it was like 'Oh wow, this is seriously good...'") Whedon was right about the show being a bit of a slow burner.

    "The network didn't quite understand it. It was a mid-season replacement. I mean, they originally chose a show called Seventh Heaven, which we haven't had over here, which was about a minister, about as different from Buffy as possible. They got the slot and we didn't.

    But Seventh Heaven was a flop, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer was commissioned to fill the gap in the schedules.

    "The ratings were okay, and I think we knew we were fairly safe," he reflects. "But certainly the critics brought it to the attention of people who wouldn't normally have seen it."

    The word of mouth was good, and by Buffy's second season, the show was a phenomenon. It's clear who Head thinks is responsible. "Joss is amazing. He amazes me. A while back he was talking about the story arc for season three and about three quarters of the way through I was saying, 'Where can you go from here?' And he said, 'Well, actually, such and such is going to happen...' Where, where in that evil little mind is all that going on?"

    And what about season four? With half the cast off to do Angel, and the rest relocating to Sunnydale's conveniently never-before-mentioned Ivy League University, how's that going to affect Giles?

    "We talked about what Giles' base was going to be. I suggested maybe a bookshop, or, what I really fancied was a second-hand record shop. Because he'd be a blues, R'n'B fan, with rare old recordings tucked away. But Joss said, 'No, I don't want him tied down,' because he was kind of tied down by the library. He wants him to be a much freer spirit, which will make him more interesting to play. I think, you know, at the end of three years, it's time for a change. If need be, I'm sure there will be a venue that Giles finds and wants to be in. But at the moment Joss is keeping his options open. And also, I think, one of the things about university is the bigness, the vastness. When you first get there you feel very unprotected, very wide open to whatever. When I was at drama school, which wasn't an enormous campus, it went on for some time, that feeling that I was a new boy, which I'm sure Joss will capitalse on. Anything that makes one feel uncomfortable...

    "Although I don't think it's going to affect English audiences for some time, I think the changes that will be initiated now, are going to produce a whole new look and slant; a completely different set of pressures. Joss has a phenomenal mind, and I don't know whether he always planned that if we went into a fourth season this is the way we'd go. But it's going to be very interesting."

    There are constantly rumours of a Buffy movie, and Head confirms that, yes, Whedon has spoken about it, but doesn't personally think that it's likely any time soon.

    "The difficulty is, it's not like The X-Files where there isn't really that much of a sequential story. Okay, there is some. But Buffy is so sequential. From its conception to release a movie could take about a year, so where on Earth do you dip into the story? If we do do one, it will have to be after the end of season five."

    So there is definitely a five-year cap on the series, then?

    "Joss doesn't want to do any more. There are a certain number you have to do in order to get syndication. And most series will degenerate after the fifth year. He wants it to go out on a high."

    Besides, Joss' previous movie experience hasn't been too hot. After the Buffy film, there was the Alien Resurrection debacle.

    "Oh, he's mad as hell about it," agrees Head. "Basically, it was--and I don't think it's any secret--one of those classic things where the director has one vision and the writer another. Getting Alien 4 was like...Well, he was very pleased and very excited, and he told me some of his ideas, which I though were great. But when he saw the first cut he was very upset, because nobody listened to him. There were certain decisions made over which he had absolutely no control. I mean, I went to the premiere, and I missed the first 10-15 minutes, and afterwards I said to him, 'I want to go back and see it again, because I want to be introduced to the people I know are going to die.' And he said, 'Don't bother, most of them are only introduced half way through the film anyway. You have no idea who they are, where they've come from...don't bother.'

    "It's a common problem with screenwriters; they have absolutely no control over the finished product. So even if they write a great piece of art, it's not necessarily going to be translated on screen. For ten years Joss was looking for control and he finally got it on Buffy.

    And Head believes that Buffy the Vampire Slayer will form the stepping stone Whedon needs to get control over his own movies. "Joss certainly knows how to direct. He's a stunning director. When he directed the Buffy pilot, he had the ideas but not totally able to communicate them. It was a very odd crew that wasn't very keen on listening to him anyway. So we were all a bit all over the place. I mean, I know he was all over the place. Everybody was. But now, he's a stunning director. We really look forward to the episodes that he's going to direct. It's only a matter of time before we lose him to the cinema."

    In the meantime, Head has his own directorial ambitions. "I have yet to talk to Joss seriously about directing an episode. Joss has said he hasn't a problem with it, it's just a matter of timing."

    Has he ever wanted to write an episode of Buffy?

    "No. Nicky (Brendon) has threatened to write an episode, and Joss doesn't have a problem with that, either, it's just a question of him coming up with the story. I've come up with a couple of ideas. When they were looking for a dark side for Giles, I came up with an idea that was too dark even for Joss."

    What? Drowning babies or something?

    "Not that far off actually. It did involve babies. But, um, it was dark, very heavy. It's a good story, so I'll hang onto it."

    The subject of "darkness" in the series is a sensitive one at the moment, after two episodes were suspended in the States owing to concern over parallels with the Columbine school massacre. One has since been shown; the other remains in the vaults. Head, however, thinks that blaming TV and music for real-world violence is a severe case of people blinding themselves to the true causes.

    "They were not related in any way. I read a really very sensible treatise by Seth Green (Oz in Buffy), where he was saying that all this stuff about Hollywood being responsible for violence and needing to maintain a tighter control is deflecting the main point, which is that in many cases people are not responsible for their children. I don't think watching Natural Born Killers is going to turn someone into a mass murderer. If they're going to be a mass murderer, they're going to be a mass murderer. Bottom line is: where the hell are the parents? Far too much onus gets taken away from the parents. It's far too easy to blame TV or Marilyn Manson. Marilyn Manson??? Please!!!"

    "I dunno. I saw the gig where he sprained his ankle. It was going really well until he fell over. He's great. But it was no different from bands I've seen like The Tubes or Black Sabbath. But it does not incite people to kill. It amazes me that once again parental involvement is ruled out. I feel responsible for how my children are brought up, and how they react within society. And I'm not going to blame someone else if I get it wrong."

    Talking of family, are there any plans for the Head clan to head LA-wards?

    "Not awfully keen," he replies. "My girlfriend's job is here. And I love the house. And I see too many British actors turn their back on their roots."

    Besides, he adds, "it's another world out there. When I'm here it's like a dream. They've not the faintest idea what a pub is.

    "I live down close to the sea. And you can walk about there. When I first went over to LA I did live in Hollywood, and it's weird because you can't walk anywhere. Everybody drives. And it's very hot. There is no breeze. But I still pinch myself every now and again when I'm driving up Hollywood Boulevard. You know, I bumped into Cameron Diaz in a bookshop. And that's the kind of thing that happens."

    Not that he has any pretensions about his chosen career's importance in the great scheme of things. "Actors have to make their money in a very, very silly way," he muses, polishing off his Lemon Roulade. "Pretending to be somebody else. I think actors can take themselves way too seriously. You may be very talented at what you do, you may be the most talented actor in the world, but in a life and death situation there's going to be nobody relying on you."

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    Sidebar: Public not swayed by Head Music. "Music is Anthony Head's other great love in life, but his attempts to become an '80s pop star sadly never resulted in international fame."

    "Joss Whedon (Buffy's creator and producer) is always joking that one day he'll have an all-singing episode," reckons Giles actor Anthony Head, "in which we can all only communicate by singing to each other. It's a great idea. But I tackled him on it the other day, and said, 'When are we going to have the singing episode?' and he said, 'When I've run out of other ideas.' It would be brilliant."

    It's little wonder that Anthony Head is so enthusiastic about the idea of a musical Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The Camden-born actor, whose brother is the singer Murray Head (who had a top ten hit in the early 1980s with "One Night in Bangkok" from the musical Chess) also once had a brief career as a pop singer.

    "I've always had a passion for music," he admits, "and at one point it was very much a choice between acting and singing. I was actually in a band in the mid-'80s. It was a post New Romantic, keyboard/guitar/drums affair. The guitarist was into XTC and I had this African rhythms thing going adn we tried to marry them. Eventually the band kind of decayed because of our conflicting interests. But I wish I had listened to him more. He wrote great songs.

    "And then I was shoved together with a keyboard player, this guy that we met and had a song. And I sang it, and he released it. And The Sun, bless their hearts, dredged it up a few years back, and ran a picture of me in my gear, very tight little black jeans going down to pointy boots. And they said, 'Ring this number and you will hear the song that launched and finished Anthony Head's singing career. And it didn't, actually.

    "The record company was interested in a follow-up. So I got the bass player from the previous band, who I was still writing with. And he and I then became this band. Terrible name--Two Way. And we released one of my songs, and one of the old guitarist's. The sales were sufficient in Europe to interest the company in making an album, so our manager went in to talk albums. A huge row ensued over the top of his head between the Head of Marketing and the A&R guy, and the record company folded. So we never got the album."

    He hasn't turned his back on music, though. As well as appearing as transvestite Frank N Furter in a tour of The Rocky Horror Show in the early 1990s, he has a couple of musical projects in the pipeline, including an animated musical, D'Ark Secrets.

    "The guy I'm producing it with says that apostrophe has got to go," he laughs. "It was a stage musical, and now it's an animated feature. Whether or not we go for cinema... No, I think we'll go straight for a direct video release. Because there are certain things in it that I don't want to have to compromise on. If we turn ourselves over to a major studio, we will undoubtedly compromise. And I don't think we have to. We're looking at releasing a soundtrack at the same time. And we've got some interesting ideas about casting."


    Sidebar: Shaken, Not Stirred! "Anthony Head as Her Majesty's secret agent James Bond? It could have happened..."

    Some of you with very good memories may recall a time when Anthony Head was touted as the new James Bond. But never believe what you read in the papers.

    "I did a couple of episodes for a series (Woof Again! Why Me?) for Central in which I played a man who turns into a black Labrador. I was also supposed to be a James Bond character, and I went off on a very, very powerful motorbike at the end. So in the publicity pictures I looked very Bond-like. One of the newspapers picked up on it, and they didn't want to publish the blurb on the show, so they decided that I was the next contender for Bond. I was doing a photo-shoot for Rocky Horror at the time and I heard on the radio that I was up for James Bond, which was nice. And at that point Timothy Dalton hadn't officially left, so it was all like 'Wow!' But the press were saying everybody in the world was going to be the next James Bond."

    Question is, if he was offered the assignment, would he take it?

    "Of course!"


    More SFX articles: p. 1 / p. 3


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