Amber Benson

Amber Benson was sixteen when The Crush and King of the Hill both came out in 1993, and she spent the rest of the decade in the parts that go to capable teenagers: Imaginary Crimes (1994), S.F.W. and Bye Bye Love (both 1995), an uncredited scene in Can't Hardly Wait (1998). Then Buffy the Vampire Slayer cast her as Tara Maclay, and from 1999 to 2002 she was inside one of the most closely watched television ensembles of its era.

Tara worked because Benson underplayed her. On a show built out of fast, quippy dialogue, she was the character who spoke slowly, hesitated, and meant every word of it, and the relationship at the centre of her run was written and performed with a plainness that television of the time mostly avoided. That deliberate quiet is still what she does best on camera. She is very good at people who are holding something back and have no intention of telling you what.

She did not wait for casting to come to her, either. She directed, produced and starred in Chance (2002) and Lovers, Liars and Lunatics (2006), co-directed Drones (2010), and has kept a parallel career as a novelist, with Death's Daughter (2009) and Witchery (2006) both listed on this page under her own name. The screen work since has stayed in horror and independent film, from The Killing Jar (2010) to The Crooked Man (2016) and House of Demons (2018), plus a small part in I Saw the TV Glow (2024), a film steeped in exactly the kind of 1990s teen television she came up inside.