Sean Bean On Always Being The Villain

English actor Sean Bean, well known for his roles in Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, spoke with Larry King about his acting method, and how he feels about often playing the villain.

“To play a bad guy, you have to go into his psychology and his mentality and that’s what I find fascinating. There are so many degrees to it- a psychopath or a sociopath- that you just have so much to play with and you can do bad things,” Bean told Larry.

In Game of Thrones, Bean’s character was not a villain, but was killed of nonetheless.

“One of the good things about it is that they killed me off and I was the lead man and I was the main guy in the first series. So if they killed the main guy off in that, they can kill anybody off and that’s what makes it such an exciting series,” Bean said.

The acclaimed actor told Larry that he likes most television shows today, “So long as they are avant garde and they’re progressive and they’re not formulaic.” He added, “One thing I can’t stand is formulaic television. It kind of treats the audience with very little respect.”

The Lord of the Rings actor commented on the success of the Tolkien series, saying, “I never realized— I don’t think any of us realized just how big it would become and how grand, how it would snowball into something that it did.” Bean played the character of Boromir in the widely successful trilogy.

You can watch the full episode at Ora.Tv.