“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” actor Anthony Head and his longtime partner Sarah Fisher, who died Friday at the age of 72 from “complications from pneumonia,” died just months apart.
Fisher died suddenly on January 1 at the age of 61, the couple’s daughters Emily and Daisy confirmed in a Facebook post at the time.
“It is with great sadness that we have to share the news that our extraordinarily kind and talented mother, Sarah, recently passed away,” Emily and Daisy said in a Facebook statement, adding that the death was “extremely devastating for all of us” as she “passed away with almost no warning.”
“No words can express all that she encompassed, nor can they describe the crater her absence has left.”
Before her death, Fisher was living with Head in Bath, England, where the animal rights activist ran Tilly Farm, a sanctuary for rescued horses, ponies and donkeys.
She and Head were together from 1982 until her death, but Head revealed in 2018 that Fisher simply had no intention of getting married.
“She’s just not interested[in marriage]. She’ll just say fuck it and run off throwing up,” he joked to the Daily Telegraph.
Still, he considers himself “married,” adding, “I can’t imagine life without Sarah. And I never want to.”
The two met backstage at the National Theater, where Head was performing in “The Death of Danton.”
“I was doing a play called ‘Danton’s Death’ and for the final entrance I had to be a soldier taking a traitor to the guillotine,” he told Hello! From People magazine, 2001. “I was waiting in the back hallway with my musket, and one day this beautiful woman walked by with a pint of beer for the man in front of the house.”
Head continued: “I arrived earlier and earlier, hoping to see her again. Eventually we ended up sitting and chatting before I had to behead her.”
The British actor shot to fame in the late ’90s with his role as Rupert Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Elsewhere in the Telegraph interview, Head said much of his success was due to Fisher’s encouragement.
“In the beginning, I was unemployed, and I sat in my room crying on the phone and said, ‘I think I should go home.’ But Sarah told me to suck it up and go to acting classes, and that’s exactly what I did.”
He stepped down as a key cast member of the sixth season of the WB and UPN series to return to the UK and be with his family.
“It was always a family decision as to how long I would be on the show, so when I first asked them what they thought about me leaving, they said, ‘Please don’t. It’s a really great show and we love having you on it,'” Head told the Guardian in February 2002.
wire image
“Eventually, when I agreed to become a recurring regular rather than a series regular, Emily (13) found it particularly difficult to accept the fact that I would no longer appear in the opening credits,” he recalled.
Head also found success with roles such as the Prime Minister in Little Britain and Uther Pendragon in Merlin.
Head and Fisher’s daughters are also actresses, often appearing as a family at red carpet events. Daisy shared the screen with her father in Freeform’s Guilt, and Emily played Head’s daughter in the BBC comedy-drama miniseries The Invisibles.
