Anthony Head

Big in America: The Brits doing rather well over there

With a bumper pay rise for his role in ’House’, Hugh Laurie has became the latest - and perhaps most unlikely - British actor to conquer the US, joining the select band of stars who have struck primetime gold.

Anthony Head, age 52

Dollar rating: About £4.3m, based on earnings of $50,000 per episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer for its 144-show run.

It all happened over a cup of coffee. The Camden-born actor came to fame on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 1980s for his starring role in the Nescafe Gold Blend adverts (known as Tasters’ Choice, state-side). Wider recognition earned him a role in a new American television series about a high school student who keeps vampires at bay between lessons. Buffy the Vampire Slayer became one of the most popular shows of the 1990s, with Head playing the part of the professorial Rupert Giles, a "watcher" whose job is to tutor the show’s eponymous star in how to kill her fanged foes.

Head, whose family continued to live in Britain while he filmed across the pond, returned to the UK after Buffy ended in 2001. He has since appeared in Doctor Who and Hotel Babylon.

Why he’s so fang-tastic: Smooth, dark, moody, just like the instant coffee he plugged so successfully, Head met all the requirements of a British character in the American television universe by playing a donnish father figure with just a hint of the night about him.