British actor Anthony Head, known for his roles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Ted Lasso, has died aged 72.<\/p>\n
His daughters, actors Emily and Daisy Head, said the actor died due to complications from pneumonia.<\/p>\n
The stage and TV performer became well known to British audiences in the 1980s as one half of a will-they, won’t-they romantic couple in a series of ads for instant coffee.<\/p>\n
Head went on to achieve wider fame as librarian Rupert Giles, mentor to the title character in the cult-favourite supernatural TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which ran from 1997 to 2003.<\/p>\n
He most recently played Rupert Mannion, the villainous ex-husband of Hannah Waddingham’s character Rebecca, in Ted Lasso.<\/p>\n
“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,” his daughters said.<\/p>\n
“How lucky we are to know we are able to watch him doing what he loved, even when he is no longer with us.”<\/p>\n
Head was born in London on February 20, 1954, to Seafield Head, a documentary filmmaker, and Helen Shingler, an actor.<\/p>\n
His older brother, Murray, is also an actor.<\/p>\n
Other notable roles he played included Geoffrey Howe, the deputy to prime minister Margaret Thatcher, played by Meryl Streep, in the Oscar-winning The Iron Lady.<\/p>\n
Head portrayed a prime minister himself in the sketch comedy show Little Britain, as well as King Uther Pendragon, the father of Prince Arthur, in the Merlin TV series.<\/p>\n
He also appeared in Motherland, Manchild, and Silent Witness, along with acting in many plays, musicals, and recording music as a singer.<\/p>\n
His longtime partner, animal welfare activist Sarah Fisher, 61, died in 2025.<\/p>\n
AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British actor Anthony Head, known for his roles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Ted Lasso, has died…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":717642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[348113,64,63,22262,134,348114,13361],"class_list":["post-717641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-anthony-head","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-buffy-the-vampire-slayer","tag-entertainment","tag-little-britain","tag-ted-lasso"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=717641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/717642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}