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When does a guy get lucky, not just once, but twice? When he's called Tony Head!
The 46-year-old actor, who became a national pin-up after appearing in the "Will they, won't they?" Gold Blend Coffee ads, which ran for five years from 1987, has been turning heads in Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
For the uninitiated, Tony plays English librarian Giles in the cult drama, a new series of which begins this week. His function is to guide Buffy as she fights evil but he's not afraid to do some slaying himself!
Chatting in L.A., where the series is filmed, Tony admits he was attracted to it because of the writing. "It's witty, it has an edge of danger and it's fresh. That's very rare," he says.
He had no worries about how to play the role. "I saw Giles as a mixture Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral and Alan Rickman in Truly, Madly, Deeply" he says.
And he describes Sarah Michelle Gellar, who plays Buffy, as "..a joy. I have only good things to say about her".
Indeed, the only catch seems to be the time he has to spend away from his wife, Sarah, and their two daughters, Emily, 10, and Daisy, 7, who live at the family home near Bath.
"The homesickness is getting harder," says Tony. "It's been three years now, but when I came back to L.A. from England after Christmas, it was tough."
Sarah and the girls do visit California in the holidays and if Tony has more than six days off, he's on the first flight home.
So why not move the family to the US? "England is home" says Tony. 'The girls go to school there and Sarah's job as an animal counsellor is there.
'I'm not moaning,' he says. 'I miss them hugely when we're not together. But when we are, the quality of life is wonderful.'
Occasionally, he asks himself if he's doing the right thing. 'But I was the one who took the gamble of trying my luck in Hollywood after the US version of the coffee ads was shown.
'Even so, you still wonder if the children are going to end up in psychoanalysis in six years' time saying their dad was little more than a shadowy figure.
'So I asked the girls recently if they would like me to leave the series. They were having none of it. they said to me, "You can't come out of it, Dad. Buffy's a really cool show"'.
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