Anne Steele

Anne Steele (born Joan Appleby and formerly known as Sister Sunshine, Chantarelle and Lily Houston) was a social worker and the director of the East Hills Teen Center in Los Angeles. Herself a former runaway teenager, her life was saved on two occasions by Buffy Summers, the Slayer, and she was also later aided by Angel and Charles Gunn. Despite facing many hardships growing up, Anne maintained an optimistic outlook on life.

Early life


Almost nothing is known about Anne's childhood, though it is clear that she suffered from some sort of abuse, which caused her to run from home and reject her birth name, taking on instead a string of aliases. Her original name was Joan Appleby.

As a teenager, Joan became involved in a sect or cult led by a "loser preacher" who dubbed her "Sister Sunshine". Afterward, she reinvented herself as "Chantarelle" and became regular at the Sunset Club, a gothic nightclub in which vampire posers and vampire worshippers gathered. Like others, Chantarelle romanticized vampires, calling them "the Lonely Ones" and becoming part of a Sunnydale subculture that adored and emulated them. However, she had never seen a real vampire before until she nearly died at the hands of vampires Spike and Drusilla. Chantarelle survived this ordeal only thanks to the intervention of Buffy Summers.

Anne
"Lily's from a song. Rickie picked it. I'm always changing anyway. Chantarelle was part of my exotic phase."

- Lily reflects on her ever-changing identities.



Chantarelle later moved to LA, becoming a homeless drifter, and took on the name "Lily Houston", given to her by Rickie, a fellow young runaway, with whom she started a relationship. The two got matching tattoos of one half of a heart and the name of the other and managed to obtain a little money by donating their blood at a local blood bank. It was during this period that she encountered Buffy Summers for the second time, as Buffy was temporarily working as a waitress in LA, and was herself also going by an alias: "Anne" (Buffy's middle name). However, it was also during this period that her boyfriend Ricky died after being abducted by the demon Ken, who posed as the director of the "Family Home", a shelter for runaway teenagers. Ken also abducted Anne later. However, Anne was freed with help from Buffy, although Anne herself helped in the defeat of Ken, pushing him from a high platform (Buffy would later finish him off by smashing his head). Buffy's heroism so inspired Anne that she decided to adopt Buffy's middle name as her own. Buffy also helped to set Anne up with an apartment and a job.

"Hey, can I be Anne?"

- Anne takes on Buffy's name.

East Hills Teen Center


Sometime later, no doubt inspired by her desire to help the kind of runaways that she herself had once been, and that had been so susceptible to predatory demons such as Ken, Anne founded the East Hills Teen Center, where she helped to provide shelter and support for homeless or wayward teenagers in LA. It was during this period that she became friends with Charles Gunn, a fellow homeless teenager who also sought to protect the helpless, though he did so by hunting vampires. She also had her tattoo removed.

With the East Hills Teen Center in financial trouble, Anne accepted the help of Wolfram & Hart, who represented the Center pro bono. This attracted the attention of Angel, whom she had briefly met during her Chantarelle days. Angel used her as part of his efforts to harass W&H's Lindsey McDonald and Lilah Morgan, who organized a charity ball from which the pair sought to steal funds for the firm. However, Angel, with the aid of the demon Boone, stole all the money, which he later gave to Anne. Even though she knew part of the money came from W&H's corrupt clients and that it was stained by Angel's and Boone's blood, she took the money to ensure the existence of the Center.

Weeks later, she became involved with Angel Investigations, when her center came under attack from zombie police officers. Anne was still successfully running the East Hills Teen Center at least as late as 2004, when she once again encountered Charles Gunn, who sought to spend a day "as if it was the last" before confronting the Circle of the Black Thorn. As he helped her carry boxes and furnitures, the two discussed about continuing their struggle despite knowing they could never win against those in power.

San Fernando Teen Center
"So you're a demon? Great. Well, you're hardly the first bad I've ever had to deal with.  I've seen worse things than you.  I'm not scared."

- Anne stands up to James

Sometime after the Fall of Los Angeles, Anne was running the San Fernando Teen Center. She was approached by a supposed good Samaritan named James, who donated food to the center. However, James was actually a demon looking to turn the Earth into a demon breeding farm using human bodies as incubators. When Anne's teenagers ate the food, various demons were summoned through a portal to begin the process.

Behind the scenes

 * She was portrayed by Julia Lee.


 * Many fans found it strange that, in the episode "Blood Money", neither Angel nor Anne recognized one another, despite having met briefly before in the episode "Lie to Me". In an interview in the first volume of Angel: The Casefiles, writer Mere Smith explains: "... it was three years ago, they said two sentences to each other, he’s totally not gonna recognise her... Joss was like, ‘Do you remember everybody you met three years ago, and shared three sentences with?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, fine, use logic.’"


 * Ironically, not only did Anne take her name from Buffy, but also in the episode "Tabula Rasa", Buffy briefly and unwittingly took Anne’s original name: Joan.


 * When Angel looked at Anne's driver's license in the episode "Blood Money", her address is listed as "Willoughby Ave." Anne Steele and John Willoughby are characters in the novel Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen.


 * Anne has been referred by six different names over the course of both series. She was born Joan Appleby, and later used the aliases Chantarelle ("Sister Sunshine") and Lily Houston, before permanently taking the name Anne Steele, which was slightly changed to Annie.

Appearances

 * "Lie to Me"
 * "Anne"
 * "Blood Money"
 * "The Thin Dead Line"
 * "Not Fade Away"