Anthony Head, Buffy and Ted Lasso Star, Dead at 72

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A beloved actor who rounded out several iconic TV ensembles has died.

Anthony Head, known for his roles Rupert Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and later Rupert Mannion in Ted Lasso, has died, his daughters. He was 72.

“It is with heavy hearts that we announce the death of our extraordinary father,” Head’s daughters Emily Head, 37, and Daisy Head, 35, said in a joint statement to the BBC on June 5. “He passed away peacefully of complications due to pneumonia, surrounded by his family.”

Head’s daughters, who have each respectively established themselves as actors, emphasized their pride in following in his footsteps.

“It has been, and forever will be, an honour and a privilege to be his daughters, and to have witnessed firsthand the impact both he and his work have had on so many,” they added. “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.”

The London native’s family emphasized he always felt “incredibly lucky” to be in the entertainment business and build a career that “spanned several decades.”

Indeed, Head’s breakout role was in the TV series Enemy at the Door in 1978, though he rose to fame for American audiences as the mentor to Sarah Michelle Gellar’s vampire slayer Buffy Summers in the late ‘90s.

“Our grief is far greater than the hole he has left behind,” his loved ones concluded, “but we know his legacy will live on, in the shows he was a part of, and in the audiences that love them.”

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Survived by his two daughters, Head was preceded in death by his longtime partner Sarah Fisher, an animal welfare advocate, who died suddenly last year at 61. At the time, Head and Fisher’s daughters shared a statement emphasizing the impact of her death on them and their father.

“Our grief knows no bounds, nor did the reaches of her incredibly unique and irreplaceable spirit," they wrote in a Facebook statement at the time. “No words could ever express all she encompassed, or begin to describe the crater her absence has left.”

While they never married—Head joked to The Daily Telegraph in 2018 she’d tell him to “f--k off” whenever he proposed—the actor always considered Fisher to be his life partner.

“I just can’t imagine my life without Sarah,” he told the U.K. newspaper. “And I definitely wouldn’t want to.”

And he credited Fisher, whom he dated for nearly 40 years, with his success as an actor.

“In the early days, I was unemployed and I would sit in my room, crying on the phone, saying, ‘I think I should come home’” he recalled. “But Sarah told me to stick it out and go to acting classes. And that’s exactly what I did.”

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