Anthony Head

Anthony Head has died at the age of 72. That seems young nowadays but it's not as young as his Buffy the Vampire Slayer costars Nicholas Brendon and Michelle Trachtenberg, who were 54 and 39, respectively. But both Head and Brendon died this year and Trachtenberg last year. Head's cause of death was reported to be pneumonia. His wife died last December so I wonder if that was a factor.

Head played Rupert Giles, the elder advisor character to the cast of characters who were mostly teenagers at the series' inception. He was the high school librarian and, secretly, the "Watcher" of title character Buffy, someone appointed by a secret council to guide the young woman born with supernatural powers to fight vampires. He played the stereotype of the stuffy, tweed coated British scholar, but nuance and complexity came to the character via both Joss Whedon's iconoclastic writing and Head's performance. Giles became the trusted and comforting voice of authority, a culturally out of step comedic foil, and one with a violent dark side. Head knitted these contradictions together into an authentic character who was a fundamental component of the series' distinctive flavour. When he was absent for long stretches in the show's sixth and seventh seasons, the tone of the series became drastically different.

Head also made a notable guest appearance on Doctor Who in 2006 and was recently on Ted Lasso.