Whether you know him from Game of Thrones, GoldenEye, the Lord of the Rings franchise, or otherwise, Sean Bean has certainly given plenty of memorable performances. Some of that notoriety has come from the fact the Bean’s characters get killed quite a lot — something the actor is now trying to combat. In a recent interview with The Sun, Bean revealed that he has now begun to turn down roles if he knows his character will die onscreen.
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“I’ve turned down stuff.” Bean revealed. “I’ve said, ‘They know my character’s going to die because I’m in it!’ I just had to cut that out and start surviving, otherwise it was all a bit predictable.”
“I did do one job and they said, ‘We’re going to kill you’, and I was like, ‘Oh no!’” Bean added. “And then they said, ‘Well, can we injure you badly?’ and I was like, ‘OK, so long as I stay alive this time’… I’ve played a lot of baddies, they were great but they weren’t very fulfilling — and I always died.”
The onscreen death of Bean’s that was arguably the most controversial happened in Thrones, when his character of Ned Stark went from being the protagonist of the show to getting brutally beheaded by the end of the of the first season. As Bean revealed, he initially didn’t expect his character to perish that soon.
“I’d read the Game Of Thrones books and they said to me, ‘You do die in this, but it’s near the end of the series’.” Bean explained. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, fair enough’. So they made it very clear at the time I was going to die, and I thought, ‘I don’t want to get stuck in one of these series that lasts seven years’. But I wish I’d have got stuck now! But it was very clear what George RR Martin wanted to happen to Ned — and it did.”
But even with such a repertoire of onscreen deaths, Bean revealed that his character’s demise in Lord of the Rings holds a special place in his heart.
“It’s my favorite death scene, and I’ve done a few,” Bean said in a 2017 interview. “You couldn’t ask for a more heroic death.”
“You can’t show off,” he said. “You can’t be vain or posing…. Because every time you die, it’s a big f—ing moment!”
What do you think of Sean Bean going out of his way to avoid onscreen deaths? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
