'Buffy' Cast Mourns Anthony Head: 'There's a Hole in the World'

Anthony Head, who for seven seasons embodied Rupert Giles — the steadfast, tweed-clad guardian at the center of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' — has died, leaving behind a cast and a generation of viewers who found in him something rarer than a television character: a believable adult presence. His passing arrives as the show itself had been experiencing a quiet renaissance, new audiences discovering it while the original cast was beginning to look back together. To mourn Head is to reckon with the way certain performances become inseparable from the people we were when we first encountered them.