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Anthony Head, the actor best-known for playing Rupert Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has died aged 72.
“He passed away peacefully of complications due to pneumonia, surrounded by his family,” his daughters Emily and Daisy Head said in a statement.
“It has been, and forever will be, an honour and a privilege to be his daughters, and to have witnessed first-hand the impact both he and his work have had on so many.”
As well as playing the mentor to Sarah Michelle Gellar’s character, Head had a recurring role in David Walliams and Matt Lucas’s BBC sketch show Little Britain, appeared in the BBC production of Merlin as well as film roles in The Iron Lady and The Inbetweeners Movie. More recently, he played former football club owner Rupert Mannion in Ted Lasso.
Born in Camden, London, Head was raised by artistic parents. His father was a documentary film-maker who founded Verity Films, while his mother was an actor who played Madame Maigret in the 60s BBC crime drama Maigret. Meanwhile his brother was also an actor best known for his lead role in 1971’s Sunday Bloody Sunday,
The Head family were committed to the arts and imparted their passion to their son. “My Christmas present was always a new dressing-up outfit that my mother – who was a brilliant seamstress – would make herself,” Head told the Guardian in 2016.
“At playgroup the woman who ran it took my parents aside one day and said, we love it when Anthony comes in dressing-up clothes, but it would be really nice to meet Anthony himself one day – he gets absolutely immersed in whatever character he’s dressed up as.”
Head began his professional career on the stage, starring in the 1978 West End revival of Godspell alongside Su Pollard. In the following decade, he took on various projects, including a role in the 1981 adaptation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and a part in 1987’s A Prayer for the Dying alongside Bob Hoskins and Liam Neeson.
In the early 80s, Head also sang backing vocals for the British pop group Red Box, and was featured on their 1986 debut album The Circle & the Square. He was arguably best known in the UK and US for his role in Nescafé’s Gold Blend TV adverts, which focused on the slow-burn courtship between a British couple.
Yet the stage remained Head’s focus, with a lead role as Freddie Trumper in the original West End production of ABBA musical Chess in 1988, as well as performing in productions of A Patriot for Me and Lady Windermere’s Fan. He also took a starring role as Dr Frank-N-Furter in the 1990 West End production of The Rocky Horror Show.
After winning the role of Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Head moved to Los Angeles for five years while his partner, Sarah, and two young daughters lived in England.
“I’d try to go home to them every three or four weeks,” he told the Guardian. “The production team would work dates around me, and every time I got the chance to have six days clear, I’d get on a plane … I spent quite a lot of money on airfares, but we made it work.”
Head said that his rise to global fame taught him “not to get caught up in the hype. [Co-stars] Alyson Hannigan and Sarah Michelle Gellar would talk about magazine covers, and I’d think: where’s mine? They were competing, but ultimately it’s a game that only lasts so long. It’s better to just get on with the job.”
After Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended in 2003, Head took a recurring role in Little Britain. The actor played a British prime minister that is constantly fawned over by a flirtatious assistant (Walliams).
In Ted Lasso, he regularly featured in scenes with show co-creator Jason Sudeikis, with the pair praised for their intuitive on-screen chemistry.
“We know how dearly he will be missed by friends, colleagues and fans of the shows he was in – he loved his job very much and he always considered himself incredibly lucky to have been able to work alongside such exceptionally talented people, in such wonderful productions, across a career that spanned several decades,” said his daughters.
“Our grief is far greater than the hole he has left behind but we know his legacy will live on in the shows he was a part of and in the audiences that love them.
“How lucky we are to know we are able to watch him doing what he loved, even when he is no longer with us.”
Head’s partner, Sarah Fisher, died in December 2025, aged 61. “It is immensely shocking to us all, and came with very little warning. No words could ever express all that she encompassed, or begin to describe the crater her absence has left,” the couple’s daughters said in a statement at the time.
Tributes have also been pouring in from those who knew and worked with Head.
“I am very sad indeed to learn of the passing of Tony Head,” Little Britain co-creator Matt Lucas wrote on X. “When we were casting Little Britain, we were looking for a ‘Tony Head-type’, because we never imagined for a moment that the man himself would be interested, but he was. Lucky us. He was unfailingly brilliant, and always so kind and warm. My heart goes out to Daisy and Emily.”
“He was so kind and generous of a soul,” wrote Head’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer co-star David Boreanaz on Instagram.
“Tony H – for every scene and time shared, I give thanks,” said Buffy co-star Eliza Dushku. “Rest in love and peace, kind sir. A dear one.”
