Sean Bean (born Shaun Mark Bean, 17 April 1959) is an English actor. Recognised for his work in both film and television, he has received various accolades including three BAFTA TV Awards, a Critics' Choice Award, an Actor Award and an International Emmy Award.
After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, he made his professional debut in a production of Romeo and Juliet in 1983 at The Watermill Theatre. Retaining his Yorkshire accent, he first found mainstream success for his portrayal of Richard Sharpe in the ITV television drama series Sharpe, which originally ran from 1993 to 1997.
Bean made his film debut in the historical drama Caravaggio (1986) and received further attention for his roles in Stormy Monday (1988) and Patriot Games (1992). He played the main antagonist Alec Trevelyan in the James Bond film GoldenEye (1995) and had a supporting role in the neo-noir action thriller Ronin (1998). Bean achieved international recognition for portraying Boromir in the fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings (2001–2003). Following the success of Lord of the Rings, Bean appeared in a variety of films, including in the science fiction Equilibrium (2002), the action-adventure heist National Treasure (2004), Greek King Odysseus in the epic historical action Troy (2004), the mystery psychological thriller Flightplan (2005), Harry Mason in the supernatural horror films Silent Hill (2006) and Silent Hill: Revelation (2012), the action horror Black Death (2010), and the epic science fiction survival film The Martian (2015).
Bean's television roles include the BBC anthology series Accused and the six-part drama Broken, Ned Stark in the HBO fantasy drama Game of Thrones, and the ITV historical drama series Henry VIII and Legends. As a voice actor, he has been featured in the video games The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006), Sid Meier's Civilization VI (2016), and the feature films Wolfwalkers (2020) and Mummies (2023) among others. Since 2002, Bean has been the main voiceover on adverts for O2, a telecommunications services provider. In 2022, he won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor for Time, a BBC One drama.
Shaun Mark Bean was born in the Handsworth suburb of Sheffield on 17 April 1959, the son of Rita (née Tuckwood) and Brian K. Bean (born 1934). He has a younger sister, Lorraine. His paternal grandfather, Harold Bean Jr. (1914–2001), served in the Royal Navy in the Second World War and was a stud mill labourer who later became a pacifist. His father owned a fabrication company that employed 50 people, including Bean's mother, who worked as a secretary. Despite becoming relatively wealthy, the family never moved away from the council estate as they preferred to remain close to friends and family. As a child, Bean smashed a glass door during an argument, which left a piece of glass embedded in his leg that briefly impeded his walking, and left a large scar. This prevented him from pursuing his ambition of playing football professionally.
Bean first attended a local school, Handsworth Junior School, before going to Athelstan School until he was 12, when he went to study at Brook School. In 1975, Bean left Brook Comprehensive School with O levels in Art and English. After a job at a supermarket and another for the local council, he started work at his father's firm. Once a week, he attended Rotherham College of Arts and Technology to study welding. While at college, he came upon an art class, and decided to pursue his interest in art. After attending courses at two other colleges, one for half a day and the other for less than a week, he returned to Rotherham College, where he enrolled in a drama course. After some college plays and one at Rotherham Civic Theatre, he won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), starting a seven-term course in January 1981.
Bean graduated from RADA in 1983, making his professional acting debut later that year as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury. His early career involved a mixture of stage and screen work. As an actor, he adopted the Irish spelling of his first name. His first national exposure came in an advert for Barbican non-alcoholic lager. In 1984, he starred in David and Jonathan by William Douglas-Home at the Redgrave Theatre in Farnham. Between 1986 and 1988, he was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, appearing in productions of Romeo and Juliet, The Fair Maid of the West, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. He appeared in his first film, Derek Jarman's Caravaggio (1986), opposite Tilda Swinton, playing Ranuccio Tomassoni, followed by the same director's War Requiem (1988). He had the protagonist role in Stormy Monday (1988), directed by Mike Figgis. In 1989, he starred as the evil Dominic O'Brien in The Fifteen Streets, where he gained a dedicated following.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Bean became an established actor on British television. In 1990, Bean starred in Jim Sheridan's adaptation of the John B. Keane play The Field. Also in 1990, his role as the journalist Anton in Windprints examined the difficult problems of apartheid in South Africa. He appeared in the BBC productions Clarissa (1991) (with Saskia Wickham and Lynsey Baxter) and Lady Chatterley (1993) (with Joely Richardson). In 1996, he combined his love of football with his career to finally achieve his childhood dream of playing for Sheffield United, starring as Jimmy Muir in the film When Saturday Comes. Although the film was not critically acclaimed, Bean received credit for a good performance. In August 1997, Bean appeared in what became a famous Sky Sports commercial for the upcoming 1997–98 Premier League season. His football-related work continued in 1998 when he narrated La Coupe de la Gloire, the official film of the 1998 FIFA World Cup held in France.
Bean's critical successes in Caravaggio and Lady Chatterley contributed to his emerging image as a sex symbol, but he became most closely associated with the character of Richard Sharpe, the maverick Napoleonic Wars rifleman in the ITV television series Sharpe. The series was based on Bernard Cornwell's novels about the Peninsular War, and the fictional experiences of a band of soldiers in the famed 95th Rifles. Starting with Sharpe's Rifles, the series followed the fortunes and misfortunes of Richard Sharpe as he rose from the ranks as a Sergeant, promoted to Lieutenant in Portugal, to Lieutenant Colonel by the time of the Battle of Waterloo.
Bean was not the first actor to be chosen to play Sharpe. As Paul McGann was injured while playing football two days into filming, the producers initially tried to work around his injury, but it proved impossible and Bean replaced him. The series ran continuously from 1993 to 1997, with three episodes produced each year. It was filmed under challenging conditions, first in Ukraine and later in Portugal. After several years of rumours, more episodes were produced: Sharpe's Challenge (2006) and Sharpe's Peril (2008). Both of these were released as two cinema-length 90-minute episodes per series. With a role as enigmatic Lord Richard Fenton in the TV miniseries Scarlett, Bean made the transition to Hollywood feature films. His first notable Hollywood appearance was that of an Irish republican terrorist in the 1992 film adaptation of Patriot Games. While filming his death scene, Harrison Ford hit him with a boat hook, giving him a permanent scar. Bean's rough-cut looks made him a patent choice for a villain, and his role in Patriot Games was the first of several villains that he would portray, all of whom die in gruesome ways.
1995–2011: The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones
In the 1995 film GoldenEye, Bean portrayed James Bond's nemesis Alec Trevelyan (MI6's 006). He played the weak-stomached Spence in Ronin (1998), a wife-beating ex-con in Essex Boys (2000), and a malevolent kidnapper/jewel thief in Don't Say a Word (2001). He was also widely recognised as villainous treasure hunter Ian Howe in National Treasure, and played a villainous scientist in The Island (2005). In the independent film Far North, he plays a Russian mercenary who gets lost in the tundra and is rescued by an Inuit woman and her daughter, whom he later pits against one another.