Alexis Denisof

Although best known for playing disgraced Watcher Wesley Wyndam-Pryce on the cult hit "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (The WB 1997-2001 / UPN 2001-03) and its grittier spinoff "Angel" (The WB 1999-2004), Alexis Denisof was a capable, stage-trained actor with a varied resume. His onscreen roles ranged from an often-drunk blowhard of a local TV news anchor (on "How I Met Your Mother," a sitcom co-starring Denisof's wife and former "Buffy" co-star Alyson Hannigan) to one of Shakespeare's most beloved comic creations in a quirky-cool updating of "Much Ado About Nothing" (2012) directed by "Buffy" mastermind Joss Whedon.

Due to his breakout character being British, many fans assumed that Denisof himself was a Brit. But although he had been living and working in Great Britain for several years before coming to Los Angeles to begin work on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," Alexis Denisof was in fact born in the small college town of Salisbury, MD. He was raised in Seattle, where his mother ran the theater department at a local community college. After studying under his mother's tutelage, Denisof attended boarding school in Concord, NH; following graduation, Denisof moved to England to break into the London theater scene. Most of his early work was behind the scenes as a fight choreographer for stage and film, but he broke onto the screen in the lead role of a low-budget thriller called "Murder Story" (1989), in which he played opposite British screen great Christopher Lee. The role of Tybalt in a television version of "Romeo and Juliet" (1994) followed, as did a recurring supporting role in a series of historical action-adventure TV movies starring Sean Bean as the dashing thief Richard Sharpe. But during this period, most of Denisof's time was split between stage work and occasional small character roles in films or on television series. In 1999, Joss Whedon created a new character for his cult-favorite series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," an officious member of the meddlesome Watchers Council initially planned as a short-lived foil for Buffy's mentor Rupert Giles. Anthony Stewart Head, who played Rupert, recommended Denisof, with whom he had become friendly in London. Although it was originally planned as a short-arc character, audiences and the show's production staff grew fond of the persnickety Wesley Wyndam-Price, and he became a regular. Having started as comic relief, Wesley became a more complex and considerably darker character, especially after moving from "Buffy" to its spin-off series "Angel," where he became the right-hand man of rogue vampire Angel (David Boreanaz) in his supernatural private investigator firm. While working on "Angel," Denisof began dating his former "Buffy" co-star Alyson Hannigan. The couple married on October 11, 2003. Their first daughter, Satyana, was born in 2009, joined by a sister, Keeva, in 2012. In keeping with an informal tradition started on the set of Hannigan's sitcom "How I Met Your Mother" (CBS 2005-2014), Denisof started a recurring role on the series, playing narcissistic TV news anchor Sandy Rivers. (Similarly, Neil Patrick Harris' husband, David Burtka, played Scooter, the hapless high school sweetheart of Hannigan's character, Lily; Cobie Smulders' husband, Taran Killam, played an obnoxious co-worker of Harris's character, Barney.) However, after "Angel" came to an end, Denisof returned to his first love of the stage, performing primarily in theater productions in and around Los Angeles. His most high-profile later TV and film roles came in association with his old friend Joss Whedon; he appeared in a recurring role in the short-lived science fiction series "Dollhouse" (Fox 2009-2010) and had a bit part in Whedon's blockbuster "The Avengers" (2012). During a respite from filming "The Avengers," Whedon shot a low-budget, guerilla-style modern update of the William Shakespeare comedy "Much Ado About Nothing" (2012) in his own home; due to his Shakespearean experience, Denisof undertook his first-ever leading role in a film, as one-half of the play's central couple, Benedick. In 2013, he joined the supernatural TV show "Grimm" (ABC 2011-17) in a recurring role.