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Post by PokerKitten on Oct 29, 2003 12:52:25 GMT
Tony Head always gives good interview and the Beeb have recently released this: Video versionAnthony Stewart Head - Season 7
Myths and legends Whose decision was it to shoot over here?
Basically, Joss had always wanted to shoot in Britain. He announced that he wanted to shoot some scenes with Willow in England, and I was very excited, because it’s my neck of the woods and it meant I could stay longer with my family before I went back to the States.
Then he said he wanted to shoot in and around Bath, because that’s where we said we'd set it if we ever do the Ripper series. I’d pitched Bath as an interesting environment, a good backdrop because it’s a cool place. Somerset is just riddled with myths and legends and folklore - ley lines and all sorts of things – it’s very spiritual
Joss said yes, so when it came to shoot Giles at home he said, “Can we do it at your house?” I thought I’d better ask my partner, Sarah, and she said, “Go on.” I said, “Yeah, but a film crew?”, and she said, “Get over it, it’ll be fine!” Actually the house loved it, it was very ‘smiley’ – it loved having all the attention. It’s a lovely house.
Horse power Were you riding your own horse in Lessons?
Yes, we’ve got nine, and Sarah works with twenty two at the farm now, where Sarah works. The horse’s name is Otto, by the way.
We scouted locations on the Friday. There was glorious sunshine, and I said to Joss, “If you want a vista, come up to the farm and check it out." There are beautiful rolling hills.
We had a big struggle, because he wanted me to ride without a crash hat, and the reason we have the farm is because a dear friend of ours came off her horse, not wearing a crash hat, cracked her head open and died. She left Sarah some money, and that’s how we were able to invest in the farm, so we felt quite strongly about not showing riding without wearing a crash hat.
I showed Joss me in a crash hat and he said, “It’s not quite the image I was looking for.” So we conceded and said, “Alright, but only at a walk.” But, ultimately, it’s only a concession and it isn’t right. In fact I balked recently when somebody else asked me to do a riding shot.
Rain stopped play Presumably the British weather affected the shoot?
I said, stupidly, “Of course, I can’t guarantee the weather”. And we all laughed, because we’d had a week of solid sun – it had been beautiful. But come Monday, as we began to film, it started to bucket down. So the shot of me on Otto has rain running down me – my hair is plastered to my forehead, but you wouldn’t know. It looks glorious because our brilliant director of photography made everything look great.
There was one shot of Alyson which we shot in the hallway instead of an exterior. It was supposed to be out in the fields and I was supposed to ride up to her on the horse and dismount. We ended up shooting this scene where the taxi comes, and I put in picking up an umbrella and going outside. The Director of Photography said “Maybe we should shoot one take without the umbrella and I said, “Come on, it’s bucketing down”. In the end he had to use the shot without the umbrella because you wouldn’t know I was raining the way he had shot it - you could not tell.
Propping up Giles Was Giles' inability to touch things a problem?
No, no, because the rules were slightly vague about what you could and couldn’t do. I was constantly asking, “Can I do this or not?” What was patently clear was that I couldn’t touch any props, to everyone’s great joy, because I have a tendency to use props a lot. Part of the way I work is to try to bring some of the outside world in to the scene, rather than just play the scene off the page. You have a life and the scene happens to be part of that, and so, quite often, I’d involve something, so everyone thought it was very funny that I was stuck not being able to use props.
It proved a challenge because I had to make sense of it - why would Giles come in and not touch anybody, not hug anybody, not involve himself like the usual thing? I was basically playing stuff had become so important and so serious and so fast with the First, and I was suddenly saddled with the responsibility of bringing all these girls in and finding them all over the world without the Watcher’s Council. I internalised it all and was in my own little world of seriousness, trying to deal with everything, and had shut down and wasn’t allowing myself to be friendly.
The potentials Where there problems filming with so many new girls?
No, all it meant was that every scene that we had with them all in we had to shoot it in 500 different directions. One of the problems of shooting a show like Buffy or Angel is that you’re limited for time, and it cuts down your choices – you can’t walk from this side of the room to that side of the room because it means that you have to cover the shot again from a different point of view. So it comes down to, “Where can I move without actually increasing the time that we have to have on camera?" It’s a little limiting, but ultimately, for the pay-off, which I thought was well worth it.
I asked Joss on the last week, “When did you come up with this twist?” and he said “Oh, about a year and a half ago!” He’s got an incredible brain, and everything had been working towards that for a year and a half. So the pay-off was worth any amount of extra coverage we had to shoot.
Giles kicks butt Were you glad to return for a number of episodes?
They said a minimum of ten, but it ended up being twelve or thirteen. The year before it meant I was able to shoot some stuff here and especially spend more time with my family instead of constantly going backwards and forwards. In year six, Joss had said very specifically after I had left that he was going to bring me back a couple of times, for things like the wedding. He called me and said, "Do you mind very much if I don’t bring you back until right at the end, because it would be more valued". I think he was right – I made a really great entrance, to disappear for that many shows and then kick butt – briefly.
I was very flattered that Joss went on record to say that he’d underestimated my part in the show and I was missed. So it would have been churlish to say, “No, I’m not coming back,”. As it happened, my involvement in season seven happened in chunks, so I was able to spend a lot more time here. I was pretty much able to fly back between each episode, so I was getting back once every two weeks, sometimes less. I’d shoot two days on an episode and then they would let me go, so I could come home, so that was fantastic. When I was a regular, it was that much harder – getting back once every month and a half or so. There was a very different feeling about the whole thing.
On song Did you ever choose between acting and singing?
It is a bit of a decision in England, because in America you can do anything you like – it doesn’t matter. But in England people do think you are a dilettante in one area or the other if you haven’t paid your dues. We did all that “We’re a recording band – we don’t gig”. I wish we had gigged, because it would have been fun. Basically, I don’t think we had the bottle for it – we were too scared of how people would receive us.
We actually wrote some good music, but then the band fell apart. I stuck together with the bass player and then somebody turned out a couple of singles, which were alright actually, a couple of our songs. But it was make your mind up time and then the acting really took off.
Now, at the age of 49, it’s very interesting to have an audience. I was really chuffed with the album. It was one of those, “Do you want to do it? situations” and I said, “As long as I don’t come out like David Hasselhoff!” I don’t think I do.
When they gave me the opportunity to do it, Sarah said, “Why don’t you get a bunch of friends and just jam, and write some songs that mean something, rather than waffle," and so I wrote songs about things I was thinking and stuff I was observing, and I think it has a place.
Relating to Manchild Was it your idea to bare your bottom in Manchild?
It certainly wasn’t mine, you can be sure of that! The bottom line is that there’s a bit of all of us in all the characters that we play. I’m not like him, he’s a sad piece of work!
What he needs to do is get away from Terry, the Nigel Havers character. He’d looked up to Terry since secondary school and has always wanted to be a Terry. He’d come late to the making money bit, and so was climbing on the bandwagon, but I don’t particularly relate to him. I don’t ride motorbikes – I’d crash them if I did. I’d crash fast cars if I drove them. I’m not particularly whizzy like that, and I’m certainly not a dentist.
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Post by PokerKitten on Oct 29, 2003 12:59:20 GMT
They also have a nice interview with Juliet Landau, when she was over here (UK) for a Con in the spring. This LINK is to the text version, but there's vid as well. Here's just a snippet about James: What is it about the pairing of you and James Marsters that has captured peoples' imaginations so much?
James and I immediately worked so well together.
I remember things starting in the audition that actually ended up making it into the episode. There was a moment when we're talking to the Anointed One and instead we got sort of lost in each other. Our heads came together, and then it was like "Yeah yeah yeah, I was talking to him," and we turned back. That actually was used as a promotional thing, that evil has a few new faces, and it really came out of a very true acting moment between the two of us.
We always have that, whenever we work together. There's all sorts of things that happen that are real surprises. It's a thing of us bouncing off each other in this really, really fun way.
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Post by PokerKitten on Nov 10, 2003 22:39:02 GMT
A cool interview with Vincent K, transcribed by Miss Blueberry from the Vincent Kartheiser Message Board pub163.ezboard.com/fthevincentkartheisercommunityfrm16.showMessage?topicID=4.topicHELL BOY
It’s amazing what a little trip into Hell Dimension can do to you. Just look at Angel’s son, Connor. Holtz took him into Quor’Toth as a little baby, and a few days later (our time) he emerged as a brooding teenager! Actor Vincent Kartheiser talks us through Connor’s troubled time on Angel.
By Paul Simpson
Angel Magazine (AM): How did you get involved with Angel? VK: I got involved with the show towards the end of 2001. I’d been doing features most of my career and I’d done a couple of guest star [roles] on , but I wanted to get a little more routine in my life, so I decided to do some television. A couple of projects came to me before Angel, but I passed on them. I wasn’t interested. What really made me interested in Angel was the idea that as a show, it changed so much and all the characters could change so much. One week there could be a spell where you were acting completely opposite than every other episode you had done. It wasn’t that clichéd kind of ‘show up, do your thing, go home’ all the time. There was always a new kind of twist. Every week I got a script, and I opened it wondering what was going to happen not only with my character but on a broad scale. So I went in and met with Tim Minear, who’s a wonderful man, and Joss Whedon. I did a read, then David Greenwalt brought me back, I met David Boreanaz and there we were.
AM: Did you follow Buffy or Angel before you were cast? VK: No. And I [didn’t] even follow Angel [when I was] on it. I’m the type of person who really enjoys sports, and really enjoys the Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel – shows about going into the depths of the ocean. I do drama 15 hours a day. The last thing I do is go home and flip on dramatic show! Before I started Angel, my agent sent me all the tapes of the show, so that’s what gave me all these inner eyes into what I was getting myself into. After they showed me the pilot episode and couple of other ones, I was sold.
AM: What did you get told about Connor when you started? When I came into the project it was for three episodes, with the option to pick me up for as many seasons as they liked, which at that point was five because that would make it concurrent with everyone else’s contracts. They never really let me know that it was going to be a one-season thing. I felt that it was anyway. There were some things that had happened before I came on. When Connor was just a baby on the show, they said, ‘The father will kill the son’. That was one of the things that Wesley found. So I always had that in the back of my head.
As the season went on, we never really got to deal with the relationship problems between me and David. I never really got the opportunity to bond with any other characters. There were a couple of scenes which I thought were the start of something. I remember J. [August Richards] and I did this scene where we’re digging a grave and I looked over at J. and said, ‘This is going to be the beginning of our bonding relationship’. Then the next episode we were back to being competitive enemies again. So I started getting an inkling fro it about halfway through the season, because I was thinking, ‘Where are they going to go? My character doesn’t fit in with Angel because we’ve never dealt with the issue’, and no-one seems to like the character of Connor too much.
AM: Connor seems to scare the hell out of them. VK: Yeah, and he’s also afraid of them. He’s not used to this world and he’s really not one of them. While they all have this relationship with each other, he’s very much away from that and very angry. He’s not willing to open up to this kind of group happiness that everyone else is so inclined to be apart of.
AM: What did you make of the life that he’d had away when he was growing up? VK: When I auditioned for the role, the script they gave me said ‘street kid’. It said nothing about being Angel’s son, and said nothing about Quor’Toth. So about two weeks before I started filming they sent me the script and it said that he’s a demon slayer from another dimension. For me, it was like, ‘How do I do this?’ So I turned off all the lights in my apartment, I got stark naked and I crawled on my hands and knees killing imaginary demons. I showed up for work the next day, and my character was kind of bent over, and I had this real living-in-the-brush kind of ‘failed being’ attitude, and they said no to that straight away. They cut that out! They were like, ‘No, no, no; stand up straight, normal voice’ – they wanted what I did in the audition, which was ‘street kid’. They just wanted a regular character to come on. That halted my process where it had begun and I had to start over.
But what I make of Connor’s past is that your past is what you know. If you were born in a third world country living in sewage, it’s what you know. I think there were times when he was in Quor’Toth that maybe he thought there was something better out there, but I don’t think he thought he could ever get there. Holtz would maybe tell him about it, but I don’t think he would ever really believe it, or could ever really see it. I think he had fun in Quor’Toth. I think he enjoyed killing demons. And I think the only reason he came to this world was to please Holtz, and to do what he felt he was born to do.
AM: Everything he’s told is a lie in the end. Did that become difficult to play? VK: I guess the lie isn’t so hard to play when you believe it. With Jasmine, if your character believes the lie, you just play it like you believe it. And with the other trust issues, that’s not so much hard to play, as it’s hard sometimes to stomach. You’ll do one thing in one episode then the next episode someone else is writing and it will come at you from a completely different angle. You say, ‘That’s not congruent with that episode; I had trust issues with that person, and now I’m opening up to them’. There was a while there when me and Charisma were together where I was trying to kind of turn her against Angel. And I was definitely not for him. But I still went to him and said, ‘You should go talk to her’. I was kind of opening up and bringing him back into it, and showing the good side of Connor, but it was also a little bit hypocritical. From week to week I am different. From week to week I am a hypocrite. So you just have to play in to that and that’s what I did.
AM: Presumably Charisma’s pregnancy must have changed the way you were going. It did change the season a bit. I don’t necessarily know where they were going to go with it, but I go know that whatever something like that happens, it’s going to change things.
AM: How much of a practical change did it make you on set? VK: Not a lot. There are much worse issues than people being pregnant, unfortunately, in this industry. I’ve worked with actors with much bigger problems than that. You had to be sensitive about some things. I’m a smoker so I would have to go back to my trailer to smoke. We had to try to work around [Charisma]. Sometimes we had to shoot her out fast, but not a lot. Actually she had an abundance of energy for a working, pregnant lady who, right in the heart of her pregnancy, they put her in so much. I was so surprised. But it worked, and I think she did well with it. But to me it didn’t really change anything.
AM: What do you think you brought to the show as an actor? VK: I have no idea what they saw in me. But I think as many people in this world, I feel that we generally think lower of ourselves than others do. Abraham Lincoln said, ‘I would never be with a woman who would have me as a husband’. It’s kind of that idea that you go into these things and you do your thing, then you walk on and you say, ‘Oh, I terrible. Who would ever want to work with me?’ I rely on others to see something in me. I try not to focus too much on myself, because I think that part of everyone’s acting should be an ability to leave the body, an ability to forget your own insecurities. That all comes back when you’re driving home and you go, ‘@#%$, I should have done that totally different! I just got an idea for that scene, and oh, I wish I’d done that.’ But on the day, you honestly do your best. I don’t know what I brought to it. But I brought to it!
AM: Do you think Connor brought a sharper edge into the show? VK: Having Connor there allowed J. to change Gunn. I think with shows like this you constantly have to be surprising the audience. You constantly have to be bringing in new characters, new situations and new demographics, and a new energy to it. I like to think that all of us are different and all of us bring something. But I leave it to David [Greenwalt] and Joss to say what that is.
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Post by PokerKitten on Nov 10, 2003 22:40:30 GMT
continued... AM: Connor is not going to be a regular cast member in season five. Would you like to come back from time to time? VK: Yes. It’s a sensitive question, but I would love to come back. To tell you honestly, this is the best group of people I’ve ever worked with. I’m saying ‘people’ – as artists, they’re very accomplished and as people their set was so was so pleasant and I had so much fun, I really made some good friends there. It was nice for me to have that stability in life. I’m really going to miss that, and I’m really going to miss some of the opportunities that it gave me too, to stretch and to try some things. But I’m also looking forward to going on and trying new stuff. I never really wanted to do five seasons, so one season I feel was nice. And hopefully they do want me back. Tim [Minear] spoke to me about bringing me back for a few episodes, and I would definitely do that.
AM: We don’t know how he’ll end up with his new family…. VK: Yeah, hopefully we’ll see that arc. That’s the thing with Angel: I could presume everything I wanted, and chances are it’s going to be totally different than that.
AM: Of all the episode on Angel, do you have any favourite moments, scene, both as an actor and also as the character? VK: When I first arrived, I love every fight scene, some more than others, but it was great to play a character that was truly badass. I’ve done fight scenes before on movies but it’s always been ‘punch, punch, fall down’. This is more like choreographed fighting. All of that was amazing for me. I really enjoyed the scenes with David when we did confront the issue between Angel and Connor. That to me is the soul of the character. The name of the show is Angel so it all comes back to him. For Connor, everything stems from this place with Angel and Holtz, and when we got the opportunity for him to let that out, I think he came out of his tough shell and showed a little bit of his sensitivity. He showed that he was hurt by his father and that he was hurt by Holtz. Those scenes I really enjoyed doing.
AM: What’s been the biggest challenged you’ve faced as an actor in you career? VK: Myself. I’ve been the biggest challenge. In life I feel that we seem to self-sabotage. I have to deal with some of fear issues and I have to take more risks. There are times that I’ve really gotten down on myself for things, and I’ve really started to believe terrible things about myself. I’ve let whoever’s hiring me dictate my own feelings about myself and then let that fester and that’s become an envious or an -placed energy. It’s only made me stagnant and pushed me backward. As an actor the challenges are numerous when it comes to character development. It’s all in the details. Sometimes you situations where the detail is obvious. You can look at the character and you go, ‘Okay, I get it, this guy’s a punk, he lives on the street, here are the details. I want this kind of a shirt, I want this kind of wallet, I want him to ride this kind of bike’. Sometimes you read a script and it tells you nothing. It says ‘James, 22’ and the dialogue could be written for anyone. For me, a big challenge is taking that, reading the script over and over and finding what details are going to help me find a voice for this character.
AM: What do you think you’re going to take away from Angel to the next role you play? VK: As an actor I think I leave the character behind. I did have some opportunities to stretch. There were parts of the season I didn’t have the opportunity to stretch, that it felt like I was doing the same scene over and over. Towards the end of the season I was really happy about the chances I was getting. I was really happy about the opportunities in the last episode. The scenes went really well and I was really glad. But generally what I take from Angel is what I take from every job, in a sense. Every little bit of information that you pick up every time you’re on a set helps you and pushes you forward. But character-wise, I leave it behind. You do your thing and then you have to leave it, whether your happy to our not with it, or whether it was good enough. You’re only as good as the next best thing you’re doing. I don’t want to stay back there, you know; I’ve got to keep moving ahead.
CASTING KARTHEISER
AM: What do you look for in a script or project?VK: Well, it’s changed. When I was young – 16,17 years old – it was all about the character for me. I really wanted to do things that I felt I could believe, and that I felt had an arc – a beginning, a middle and an end. The character grew. I always grew from those experiences. Whenever a character grows then I feel like I grow in sense. And although I always leave it behind I feel parts of that always stay with you.
As I’m getting older, character still plays a vital part in everything, but now I’m also looking to work with accomplished directors, to work with people who want settle for second best. I want to work with people who when I do something that it’s fitting or when I’m doing something that isn’t authentic really push me to go further. Not insult me and say ‘Do it better’, but they work with me to go further. It’s a collaborative thing. Whenever you show up on the set and you go to the director and say, ‘Hey, I know you’re directing this scene, but I have an idea’. Sometimes he’ll say, ‘That doesn’t work’, sometimes he’ll say it does. It’s the same with actors. I have worked with some people, as we all have, who don’t bring anything and leave it all in your hands. I’m not the kind of actor who’s going to come on to the set and feel over-secure about what I’m doing. I want to be pushed and I want to be pushed and I want to be stretched.
I like this young man ;D
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Post by PokerKitten on Nov 10, 2003 22:44:26 GMT
www.nickbrendon.com say that Nick has just landed a movie - Celeste in the City. "It's about a young girl who moves from a small town to Manhattan and gets made over by her gay male cousin, and the romantic adventures that follow for her. Nicholas will play the cousin." Slash fans will be delighted
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Post by PokerKitten on Nov 10, 2003 23:07:53 GMT
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Post by PokerKitten on Nov 15, 2003 0:25:21 GMT
www.eonline.com/ Watch With Kristin grill, gossip, and gripe Forecasting the Future for 's Could-Be Loves--and a Small-Screen Nerd Comes of Age by Kristin | November 14, 2003 (The artist formerly known as Wanda) Rory Is My Bitch!" He's come a long way, baby. Buffy fans who know Danny Strong as Jonathan, the shy nerd from the evil Geek Trio, are seeing a whole new side of him on the WB's Gilmore Girls. Tuesday marked his first episode as Rory's new boss, Doyle, editor of the Yale newspsaper, who, get this, is not a dweeb. "Isn't that great?" Danny says with a laugh. "Isn't that exciting? Not one ounce of geek. No Star Wars references. Actually, I don't really care about playing geeks--it seems to come natural for me--but it's fun to play a cool character."Danny has shot two episodes, and he says there could be more, given that the newspaper storyline is likely to continue. At least, he hopes so, because he loves the show (was a fan before going on it) and loves his character.
"I love it because I get to lay down the line. I was Warren's bitch for so long, and now Rory is my bitch."
For you non-Buffy buffs, he's referring to the show's "head geek," one-third of a trio that included Tom Lenk (Andrew), who, Danny confirms, will be back on Angel very soon. Danny says there are no current plans for Jonathan to guest, but "you never know. I did three more episodes after I died, and I got a raise to boot."
He also guested on the just canceled L.A. Dragnet, as an Internet porn mogul. "It's very scummy, which is good for me," he says. "After all that sweetness from Buffy, it's good to show my true colors a bit."
And he could use some lovin'. "I've actually never had a girlfriend on ," Danny laments, "and I think Rory would be perfect. She's a good four inches taller than me. And when's the last time we saw that-L.A. Law?"
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Post by Cyrus on Nov 18, 2003 10:34:34 GMT
Pirate Giles!Anthony Stewart Head will be appearing in both Peter Pan and The Pirates of Penzance from December - and we've now got the pictures to prove it.
The productions will run at the Savoy Theatre, London from 15th December 2003 to 20th March 2004, with Tony playing Hook in Peter Pan and the Pirate King in Gilbert and Sullivan's operetta The Pirates of Penzance.
Produced by Raymond Gubbay and directed by Stephen Dexter, with design by Francis O'Connor and lighting by Andrew Bridge, the productions will alternate, but in a rather irregular pattern. So, best check the press for details!
To see Tony in full panto mode, click on the links on the right. Pictures are by Tony Brown.
Further details can also be found on the Raymond Gubbay website.
Look out for a competition to win tickets to see Peter Pan with Tony on the Cult site soon. There's a couple of pics at that link... very funny with the wig and all...
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Post by PokerKitten on Nov 18, 2003 13:10:54 GMT
Tony is taking over this thread! Mind you, he''s always working! Metro Cafe www.metro.co.uk/metro/interviews/interview.html?in_page_id=8&in_interview_id=707 Anthony Head by Bel Jacobs, November 17th, 2003
60 SECONDS EXTRA!: In the 1980s, Anthony Head played the romantic lead in the Gold Blend adverts; in the 1990s, he was Rupert Giles, the bumbling intellectual battling evil in cult US series Buffy The Vampire Slayer. His next role is Andrew Barton, a gynaecological surgeon with a penchant for performing unnecessary hysterectomies, in the new comedy Reversals for ITV1
What will you miss about Buffy? Seeing everyone. We were a really close group and they were very interesting, talented people.
Do you like the idea of a team that builds up over years? If it's right. It all comes from the top. Joss [Whedon, creator of Buffy] is an incredibly generous person and that couldn't help but filter down. I've heard about sets where whoever's in charge is insecure and defensive. That can wreak havoc on a team. You hear about some of these American sets where the atmosphere was just lethal. I did a job with someone recently and he said that, if he had to do a scene with the leading woman, she was never there - someone read her part for her. People ask me what Sarah [Michelle Gellar, who plays Buffy] was like: she was always there and did every scene with equal intensity whether she was off camera or on.
Giles had this dark side that you occasionally saw flashes of. Did you enjoy that side of him? Of course. That's why I'm playing Captain Hook.
Panto? Not really. We're doing Peter Pan and Pirates of Penzance at the Savoy.
You must have turned down loads of offers to play characters like Giles. Yes - professors, London gentlemen. But Giles himself was an about-turn. Before Buffy, I'd always played baddies or romantic heroes. But when I went out to the States, I made a conscious effort to open things up. When Giles came along, I thought: great; this isn't a romantic hero, this is a character.
You've got an American lilt going there. Have I? I hope somebody beats it out of me very, very soon.
Tell me about Gold Blend. They wanted someone with a particular kind of twinkle, so that the audience were never sure where the guy is going. I did try and put a few flaws in but he ended up a bit of a smoothie. Anybody in their right mind would have hated him.
How did the campaign end? I actually pulled the plug. We had done 12 and I felt that it had done its thing. And if you don't walk away, you don't open yourself to other possibilities. But the money was very liberating. I was able to say: 'No, I am not going to do anything for a year after my first child is born.' And, since then, I've been in an extremely enviable position of being able to say no. As an actor, it is a very, very rare opportunity.
Has the campaign changed the way you feel about coffee? That has got to be your editor's question.
No - actually, that's mine. I was feeling a little fazed. Only in as much fans used to bring coffee round as a joke.
And now you're playing another dubious character. Yes, he [Andrew Barton, Head's character in Reversals] is very much the villain. But very few people are bastards for the sake of it. I like to think about their agenda. What is their paranoia? What are their insecurities?
He takes out women's uteruses without their permission? It was something that happened in the 1960s and 70s. Barton's justification is that these women are costing the NHS money.
I hear your wife Sarah is a horse-whisperer. Lots of animals - when they're bowling about as puppies, kittens or fowls - will break or sprain themselves and that has a knock-on effect later in life. A lot of behaviour we interpret as bad temper can come down to that. There was a pig at this rescue centre who squealed uncontrollably when someone went near her. Sarah thought the pig might be blind. So the people there changed the way they worked with her - and now she's their mascot.
It sounds like a process of educating people as well. As soon as you understand the problem, it completely changes the way you deal with the animal and the animal itself will begin changing.
Reversals begins on Wednesday, at 9pm on ITV1.
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Post by Cyrus on Nov 19, 2003 6:01:50 GMT
X-pose Magazine October/November 2003 Mercedes McNab: Vamping It Up
It’s seven years since she first appeared in Buffy, and four since she became a Vampire. But now Harmony is coming into her own as she joins Angel, as Mercedes McNab tells us...
She’s strong, quick and can type like a superhero… that is, if there was a superhero whose power was typing. She also knows how to whip up the perfect cup of pig’s blood to help get you started in the morning. What’s her secret? Why a touch of otter, of course. This hardly describes your typical office worker. Then again, Harmony Kendall has never been what you’d call typical.
As a single undead girl trying to make it in the big city, Harmony has been working in the steno pool at the evil Los Angeles law offices of Wolfram & Hart. However, at the start of Angel’s fifth season, she was promoted to an executive assistant and now reports to the company’s new boss, Angel. Having threatened to kill the perky vampire during their last encounter, he is hardly pleased with this arrangement. Harmony, on the other hand, thinks her new job is made in heaven – or should that be hell? As for actress Mercedes McNab, the offer to reprise the role she originated on Buffy the Vampire Slayer came out of the blue.
“It was back in May, and I was getting ready to move to New York City,” recalls McNab during her lunch break on the Angel set. “Two days before I was set to leave, Joss Whedon [ Buffy and Angel series creator/executive producer] phoned me. In all the times I’ve worked for him he’s never called me personally, so I knew it had to be pretty important if the boss was on the phone. Joss asked me, ‘If Angel is picked up for a fifth season we really want you to have a pivotal role on the show. What do you think? What’s your availability?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m moving to New York, but when you definitively know whether or not it’s a go just let me know.’ Two days later I was on a plane to New York and a month into my stay the Angel office called and said, ‘How about coming back to Los Angeles?’ And here I am today.”
The actress was one of many who originally read for the starring role in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. In the end, Sarah Michelle Gellar won the part, but the show’s producers were so impressed with McNab’s audition that they hired her to play Cordelia Chase’s best friend Harmony. She made her debut in what became the show’s unaired pilot.
“I remember Charisma Carpenter and I had to wear these insanely short skirts and really high platform shoes that were very uncomfortable and nearly impossible to walk in. The two of us always thought we were going to fall over, so we made up a song about our shoes – which we called stilts – and sang it as we stumbled to the set,” laughs the actress.
by Steven Eramo
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Post by PokerKitten on Nov 23, 2003 14:17:24 GMT
Pics of Aly (and Alexis in a few) at some awards thingie - HERE She is looking beautiful, and Alexis sure looks cock-a-hoop! ;D
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Post by Cyrus on Nov 23, 2003 14:20:13 GMT
Yeah I saw those earlier this morning... unfortuantly you can't make them bigger without having an account with them, but at least they're not as small as wireimage has theirs... but I would've liked to see that ring pic bigger...
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Post by Cyrus on Nov 25, 2003 9:46:33 GMT
A couple more Tony Pirate pics up at www.anthonyhead.org . Click on Galleries, then Gallery 4A... The Java applet in the middle of the page is so neat! Well from a nerd's point of view... lol... It's the changing pics thing in the center of the page...
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Post by Cyrus on Nov 26, 2003 10:47:54 GMT
No One Wants Angel’s Car Sfgate.com
"Angel" star David Boreanaz has discovered he’s not as popular as he thinks he is, after failing to find a buyer for his Mercedes car on auction Website eBay. The one-time "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" star thought he’d sell his top-of-the-range Mercedes on the Internet last month, but no one is interested in the $78,000 asking price.
Boreanaz even offered to personally deliver the car, and spend a day with the buyer.ROTFLMFAO! And yet James can sell his old couch... ;D
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Post by nightnurse on Nov 26, 2003 21:10:39 GMT
;D LMAO....but i know I'd rather sit on the couch James' butt has touched, than BBs car seat!
Um yeah.. but there IS a bit of a price difference too ;D - PK
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Post by PokerKitten on Dec 16, 2003 0:33:15 GMT
More ASH: www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2003/12/15/bthed15.xml&sSheet=/arts/2003/12/15/ixartright.html
Buried treasure (Filed: 15/12/2003)
He's always been a well-known face, thanks to Buffy and Gold Blend - but now West End stardom beckons in two piratical roles. Anthony Head talks to Jasper Rees
Anthony Head is most famous for two things: coffee and Buffy. He appeared for many years in those yuppie romance advertisements for Nescafe Gold Blend, then became a star of the cult series Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the US.
The problem for him - and for the producers of the two West End shows he is starring in over Christmas - is that he was entirely uncredited in one and had to change his name for the other.
"There was another Tony Head in America," he explains. "I wrote him a letter and said, 'Can I be Anthony S Head?' And he said, 'No.' There was no argument. So I'm Anthony Stewart Head over there and Anthony Head here. It's very confusing."
After seven years over there, plain old Anthony Head has been increasingly visible back home, where he returned for good this April. He was one of the four middle-aged debauchees in the BBC drama Manchild, played a superbly horrid consultant in the recent ITV sex-swap drama Reversals, and has just turned up as the prime minister in another cult show, the BBC's Little Britain. The joke there is that his male private secretary has the hots for him, and frankly who can blame him? With clear blue eyes, hammerhead cheekbones and shapely coiffure, Head will still have his smooth good looks when he turns 50 early next year.
Ever so slightly prissy as Giles in Buffy, in person his voice has a ragged vestige of north London, where he grew up. In a battered leather jacket and rakish little earstud, he looks slightly rougher round the edges than his screen persona.
Head has been commuting to London from Bath every day for five weeks to rehearse a pair of pirates in two Christmas shows that will run in rep at the Savoy Theatre. He will give us his Captain Hook in Peter Pan and the Pirate King in The Pirates of Penzance.
Head has played Frank'n'Furter in The Rocky Horror Show, and held up his end in the musical episode of Buffy, but of the two buccaneers it was the non-singing one who hooked him.
"I didn't want to work over Christmas, but the director, Steven Dexter, said, 'I've never yet seen a truly scary Hook.' They are always camp. If you are in a child's fantasy about pirates, the pirates aren't going to be arch. They are going to be true villains. He's a nasty piece of work."
A nasty Etonian piece of work: Head's theory is that whereas the Pirate King is "a matinee idol who is all grin and teeth", Hook is damaged goods, sent away to boarding school as early as six. The actor has a vague memory from roughly the same age of seeing Ron Moody as Hook. "Moody used to milk a wonderful speech that Hook has and get laughs on top of the laughs until the point where he couldn't get into the speech. I remember thinking at the time, why are you doing that? Something is wrong here."
We shouldn't mistrust these instincts, as Head has a knack for choosing the sexy, culty option. Explaining why he opted to be in Little Britain, he says: "I just thought it was completely off the wall. It was so different. I saw the sketches they'd already recorded and thought, this is wonderful stuff. Most of the stuff I've instinctively gone along with has paid huge dividends. You have to go on gut feeling."
Hence, with Buffy, he was available only because he had astutely turned down another American series which promised financial security. It was another gut feeling. "I didn't really rate the scripts. They had a guarantee of 44 episodes and my American agent was saying, 'What do you mean you're not interested?' When I first read Buffy I laughed out loud, and also couldn't wait to find out what happened. I'd not come across anything genuinely this witty or this exciting."
While filming a sort of half-baked, underfunded pilot, he remembers standing next to the star, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and talking to the show's creator, Joss Whedon. "I said, 'Is it going to be successful? I have no idea.' He said, 'You have to be aware it's going to take time because the studio don't get it, the network sure as hell don't get it, but the fans will get it and it will spread by word of mouth and it will be worldwide.' "
Head stayed full-time for five series, leaving his wife, a horse whisperer, and their two daughters behind in Bath for eight months of every year. He knew something of the tyranny of an actor parent's schedule because his mother, Helen Shingler, played Maigret's wife on television.
"All our holidays revolved around the shooting schedule in France for Maigret." (The family have all been in the business: his father made documentaries; his older brother Murray also acts, but is better known for the 1984 hit, One Night in Bangkok.) As a visiting guest star he shot his last scene earlier this year. "When it finally happened, I heard this voice somewhere, 'That's end of photography on Anthony Head.' There was a round of applause. I cried afterwards." On the same day, Whedon consoled him with news of an idea for a Giles spin-off. "It would make a lovely movie. But the bottom line is I've heard nothing since."
Head first went to America 10 years earlier. He'd had his minor stage triumphs, but was more or less driven out of this country by the success of the Gold Blend ads. There were 12 "episodes", as the admen chose to call them, in this country. Latterly, separate versions were filmed for America, starring Trevor Eve as the estranged husband of the character played by Eve's actual wife, Sharon Maugham. It was Head who called time on the campaign after 10 years. Eve's pragmatic advice was based on his own experiences of being in Shoestring.
"He said, 'The bottom line is, people are always going to know you for this. Why not do it right the way through?' " But Eddie Shoestring, the detective Eve played more than 20 years ago, had his own drama series, not to mention his own name. Head's nameless character had 45 seconds, twice a year. He says that the ad campaign "was huge profile, but things got a bit contracted here after the advert. It was one of those things where you know you are going to have to wait it out."
And wait it out he has. Typical - he hangs around all this time for a West End lead, and then two turn up at once.
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Post by PokerKitten on Dec 18, 2003 0:52:20 GMT
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Post by nightnurse on Dec 19, 2003 22:18:36 GMT
;D Poor old ASH..the Daily Mail reviewed Peter Pan, and gave it no stars ' But this sorry fiasco is dull , cheap looking, badly acted and dumped miserably on the stage in this most beautiful of renovated theatres, as if it were some calculated insult to the festive spirit. Most of the actors can hardly be heard. Anthony Head's Captain Hook is a drawling bore with a scimitar hand an eye patch and a hip-swivelling walk like a floor model.' And in a celeb gossip feature in Best magazine, studio's want to reprise the film 'Love Story' with real life couple SMG and Freddie Prinze(!?) Apparently she's keener on the idea than he is!
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Post by PokerKitten on Dec 23, 2003 0:33:46 GMT
*shudders at that hideous idea* www.whatsonstage.com/dl/page.php?page=greenroom&story=E8821072104298
Alyson Hannigan, of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and American Pie fame, will star opposite fellow Hollywood import Luke Perry (from Beverley Hills 90210) in the world premiere stage adaptation of When Harry Met Sally, which opens 20 February 2004 (previews from 10 February) at the West End’s Theatre Royal Haymarket, where it’s booking up to 29 May 2004
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Post by nightnurse on Dec 23, 2003 1:18:51 GMT
;D Ooh...thinks..do I fancy this...didn't much care for the film...but Luke Perry, I actually liked him as Pike(!) in the Buffy film.
Oh and I'll raise your shudder with a *ughhhh* at the toothsome twosome in Love Story.!
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