Born in Buffalo in May 1969, David Boreanaz graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in cinema in 1991 and moved to L.A. to start his film career. Instead, he found his way onto Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-99).
Buffy Summers is The Slayer, the "one girl in all the world" with the power to kill the vampires, demons, and other evils who keep escaping from the hellmouth located in suburban Sunnydale, California, while trying to negotiate high school.
Her scoobies include science nerd Xander (Nicholas Brendan, left); his girlfriend, a 1000-year old vengeance demon; witch-in-training and eventual lesbian Willow; and Willow's doomed, bury-your-gays girlfriend.
Not a lot of beefcake in the bunch, but the writers took care of that by giving Buffy lots of boyfriends, including two feuding vampires, the conflicted, tortured Angel (David Boreanaz, top photo), and the sassy punk rocker Spike (James Marsters).
I liked some of the adventures, such as when everyone in town had to sing instead of speak, or when grinning men who fed on fear started floating around. And Buffy gave us two indispensable terms for analyzing tv shows, scoobies and Big Bad.
The attitude toward LGBT people was a bit old fashioned. Xander, upset because a lady demon rejected him, announces that he's going to go gay. Willow explicitly states that she was straight, but changed to gay. Their handler shuts them all down, proclaiming that there's no time to worry about "orientations" when they're facing the most severe crisis of all time (every season).
In 1999 Angel left Sunnyvale, except for a few guest appearances, to start his own paranormal detective agency, in Angel (1999-2004). His scoobies included Cordelia, a reformed high school Mean Girl; the half-demon Doyle (Glen Quinn), and Wesley (Alexis Denisof, left), a "rogue demon hunter" -- at least in the first season. Glen Quinn died, and there were many defections and replacements, doubtless because this was not a fun, tongue-in-cheek paranormal adventure.
I had to keep watching due to a partner who was a big fan, but it got very, very dark. Sure, Cordelia used to be a Mean Girl, but did that justify putting her through excruciating physical pain in every episode? I insisted that he fast-forward past the scene where Wesley's girlfriend spends five minutes dying, in the awareness that she has no soul, so she's headed for extinction. This is supposed to be entertainment? F*k the Sadness.
After Angel, David finally managed to break into movies. I didn't see any of them, and probably won't. These Girls (2005): high school girls blackmail a "slightly older hunk," who happens to be married, into having sex with them? In 2005, David was 36. But at least he gives us frontal and rear nudity.
Explicit David dick after the break
