Women adored me as the Gold Blend man - I hated him, 4 February 1999, by Rebecca Fletcher.

The smoothie in the Gold Blend ad gets his teeth into a new role.

Tony Head has given up coffee-drinking for a new role fighting vampires. After fending off his own stalker, he should have no problems...

He was the man who made us afraid to put the kettle on during commercial breaks. As one half of the Gold Blend couple in the coffee ads, Tony Head kept audiences glued to the TV screen, fearful of missing the next episode.

His chemistry with co-star Sharon Maughan in the will-they-won't-they advert romance won him plenty of female adulation--but it wasn't always welcome.

One fan became so obsessed with Tony that she started stalking him.

"She was a nutty French woman called Carole," he says. "Somehow she got hold of my number and started ringing me day and night. It got to the point where I'd slam the phone down, pick it up half an hour later and she was still on the line.

"I didn't realize how obsessed she was until I tracked down her mum in France to tell her what was going on. She thought I was ringing to introduce myself as her son-in-law because Carole told her we were getting married!

"I changed my number and, luckily, never heard from her again."

So far, that has been the only downside of starring in an ad campaign that made Tony a household name. Now he's hoping to be as popular again with his new role in the US spoof horror series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which started on BBC2 in December.

He plays Rupert Giles, a quiet librarian who watches over Scream 2 star Sarah Michelle Gellar as she hunts down vampires. US audiences love him.

"As soon as I read the script, I just knew Ihad to be in it," says Tony, 44. "It's great playing a quirky role instead of a romantic one for a change. But I'm desperate for the show to be a hit in Britian so people don't forget me."

At the height of the Gold Blend ad campaign, bookies were taking odds on whether Tony's smoothie would get the girl. Yet, while women swooned over his character, Tony didn't particularly like him.

"I thought he was pretty insufferable," he laughs. "He was far too suave and a bit of a toad really, so I tried to give him a few flaws to make him more human. I'm nothing like him in real life--I'm really clumsy and have been known to put my elbow in my girlfriend's eye during moments of passion. I'm hardly a womaniser."

Even so, the success of the series saw sales of Gold Blend rise 40 per cent.

"It's amazing how something that was meant to advertise coffee took on a life of its own," he says. "The chemistry between me and Sharon was extraordinary--you can't manufacture that spark!"

But being so high-profile had its drawbacks. Tony became typecast and had to move to America to find work. "It limited job offers at home, but I don't regret doing the ads for a minute," he says."They gave me an international profile most actors would die for and I'm very proud of them."

Signed up for a five-year contract in Buffy and with a play and a movie in the pipeline, Tony's proof that there is life after TV ads. His only regret about working abroad is that he sees less of his partner Sarah Fisher, 34, and their children Emily, 10, and Daisy, eight.

"It's hard being apart from them," he admits. "Luckily Sarah understands I have to be where the work is. We met before I was in the ads, at the National Theatre. But, no, I didn't invite her back to my place for coffee on our first date. Youhave to be very careful who you ask, you know..."

Caption: Tony's ditched his suave coffee-drinking image for a role as a vampire hunter. His new show is huge in America.

Caption: Tony's on-screen romance with Sharon Maughan kept TV audiences glued to the screen.

Caption: Tony only sees his partner Sarah and daugher Daisy, left, and Emily for six days a month. They live near Bath while he films in America.

Page created May 1999. Original material © Betsy Vera (bentley@umich.edu). This website is for information and entertainment purposes only and is not intended to infringe on copyrights held by others.

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Source: Aisha Bewley