Typecast as a coffee-drinking yuppie, Anthony Head left the UK for America, where a role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer revived his career. Then came that role as the PM in Little Britain and a newfound cult status in his native country. He talks to Patrick Barkham...Not many dads work with Paris Hilton and then go home to muck out the donkeys, but these extremes are everyday experiences for Anthony Head. With a weakness for pouting in photographs but also for sturdy shoes, he seems one part 80s popstar and one part farmer - and has been both. But the part that everyone of a certain age still remembers is the aroma-loving yuppie he played in those Gold Blend ads 20 years ago.
To his daughters' generation, Head is better known as Rupert Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the prime minister and object of Sebastian's crush in Little Britain. His latest role is also paternal: in The Invisibles, a new BBC comedy drama, he plays an ageing criminal and father who struggles to come to terms with his "retirement" in a Devon fishing village.
It marks a new chapter in what is fast becoming a dynasty. The son of actor Helen Shingler, Head has two daughters with his "partner/girlfriend/wife" of 26 years, the animal behaviourist Sarah Fisher, and both children are making their first forays into acting. In The Invisibles, Head's eldest, Emily, 19, plays his on-screen daughter, who at first has no idea that her father was once the best safecracker in Britain.
Acting opposite his daughter was a pleasure, says Head, above the crackling and popping of an open fire in the Royal Crescent hotel in Bath. "For an actor it's a real joy for the emotions you are feeling to be real. You are not having to think. I've got these great scenes when Emily starts to twig who I am. I'd look into her eyes and I'd start to well up." He has played other characters with daughters, but "there's just that much more of a bond with Em", he says. "When I hold her hand or kiss her forehead, it's the most natural thing, there's nothing thought through about it."
Their father's career has obviously brought them a comfortable childhood, but Emily and Daisy, 17, have had to put up with a lot. When they were young, he spent seven years in America filming Buffy while Sarah agreed to stay in rural Somerset and be a "single mum". Then Head returned home to that role as a Blairish PM, opposite David Walliams' camp aide, Sebastian, in Little Britain. He appeared in one episode wearing a black posing pouch and wielding a feather duster. "I did feel sorry for my children because they had to go into school the next day," he says. Most of the time, though, having a dad in Buffy and Little Britain was a source of pride for them. "It's hard at school for any child of a parent with a high profile. They are going to get stick, but at least they've got the kudos of me doing something that - in the sight of their contemporaries - is cool. One of Daisy's friends said to her, 'Your dad's really cool, he kissed a black guy' [on Little Britain]. I'm really pleased he thought that was cool."
At first, Head did not encourage his daughters to pursue acting. He remembers being almost traumatised by performing auditions before the critical eye of his mother, who played the wife of the detective Maigret in the popular 1960s series. "I said, 'Why don't you do what I did - do as much drama as you can in school and if you still want to do it, maybe go to drama school?' Sarah said, 'Back in your box, why limit what they can do now? Who knows if they're going to want to do it when they are 21, but you can be sure if they get to 40 and haven't done it, you will be the person that stopped them'." Suitably chastened, Head contacted his agent, who took his daughters on.
Head has an unusually comprehensive website, suggesting a large, loyal fanbase (he also regularly attends the Collectormania autograph fairs beloved of Trekkies and Buffy obsessives) with its scribbled notes promising fans that the site won't announce new roles until they are confirmed, adding: "Sorry if this is frustrating for those of you who have caught a whiff of something going down."
The somethings going down include a film adaptation of Repo! The Genetic Opera, a bizarre rock opera brought to screen by the director of the gory Saw II, III and IV films. Set in a "Blade-Runneresque" future of mass organ failure, Head plays an organ "repo" man who rips out transplanted organs when their owners can't keep up the payments. "The idea is really cool. It's really fucked up. It's hugely sick. I get to eviscerate people and sing while I do it," Head giggles.
Repo! also stars Sarah Brightman and Paris Hilton. What was it like working with Hilton? "Oh, she's really sweet. She's odd, bless her, but I guess you'd have to be. I liked her, we got on fine. She just kind of curled up in her makeup chair and then occasionally fell asleep as her makeup was being put on, because all the time we were there she was out hosting parties. That's what she does for a career when she's not acting - she turns up to parties and they pay her. She was flying off all over the place so she was a bit knackered," he says. "She seemed a bit of a lost soul, a bit of a little girl in a strange world of somebody's making, I don't know whose."
Although Head thinks the distributors are puzzling over how to market the film - following the recent controversy over the trailer for Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd (in which Head has a cameo), which failed to mention it was a musical - it sounds as if he's found himself in another cult project. Does he have a nose for these zeitgeisty things? "I think they might find me. Little Britain completely found me. I was going to turn it down," he admits. "I had absolutely no idea it was going to be that big."
With Buffy, he'd gone to the US because he had found himself "very typecast as this smooth, coffee-drinking yuppie" in this country. He says he knew he would have to leave Britain when a casting director told his agent: "This is a serious drama - we don't want people reaching for their coffee jars." When he returned to Los Angeles recently, he found Buffy's influence has endured. "The number of people who are high up in the industry out there who grew up with Buffy, you almost get that ..." He bows with his arms in mock worship.
Head is not worried about his daughters taking up acting, although he frets about them in a fatherly way. What if people assume that they have careers due to a helping hand from daddy? "They earned their place in the agency by getting gigs," he says firmly. "It's been so formative for them. They have grown so much through the experience. They may find it's a nonsense business. So far, they have done really well, touch wood, but you never know what is going to happen. They've seen me: every time I'm out of work, I don't think I'm ever going to work again. We're insecure by our very nature. Why else would you want to dress up in funny clothes unless you were not secure in yourself?".
The Invisibles starts on BBC1 tonight
