I agree about the contrast between his two personas (though I now can see the moments when Angelus seeps through in Angel's behavior - watch the scene between him and Xander in Prophecy Girl and compare it with their scene in Killed by Death). I used to really disassociate those two personas back in the day, they seemed so different.
But I never thought they were literally two people. Mostly because the characters on the show, including Angel himself, constantly talked about Angel having done this or that, not about two different guys. He always talked about the terrible things *he* did in the past, not some other guy, and as Angelus he talked about the way Buffy made *him* human and what happened to *him*, not some other guy.
In fact, when I first started looking for Buffy online communities after having seen just the first 3 seasons, I ran across some poll of favorite Buffy characters, where Angel and Angelus were listed as two characters, and I was like: WTF? It didn't even occur to me that someone would treat them as separate characters any more than they would treat Wolf!Oz as a separate character from Oz.
Ironically, the characters on the show (including Dru, Spike and Angel himself) were all using the name "Angel" for soulless Angel (the shooting scripts did the same) except for Jenny at one point in "Innocence". The habit of using "Angelus" for soulless Angel didn't start until "Enemies".
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But I never thought they were literally two people. Mostly because the characters on the show, including Angel himself, constantly talked about Angel having done this or that, not about two different guys. He always talked about the terrible things *he* did in the past, not some other guy, and as Angelus he talked about the way Buffy made *him* human and what happened to *him*, not some other guy.
In fact, when I first started looking for Buffy online communities after having seen just the first 3 seasons, I ran across some poll of favorite Buffy characters, where Angel and Angelus were listed as two characters, and I was like: WTF? It didn't even occur to me that someone would treat them as separate characters any more than they would treat Wolf!Oz as a separate character from Oz.
Ironically, the characters on the show (including Dru, Spike and Angel himself) were all using the name "Angel" for soulless Angel (the shooting scripts did the same) except for Jenny at one point in "Innocence". The habit of using "Angelus" for soulless Angel didn't start until "Enemies".