Sean Bean turns 56 today! Sean is well-known to fans of fantasy, most notably for his role as Boromir in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and recently as Eddard Stark in Game of Thrones.
Sean shot to fame with his role as Richard Sharpe in the Sharpe series about a maverick rifleman in the Napoleonic Wars. He became known to American audiences with more villainous roles, appearing opposite Harrison Ford in Patriot Games and alongside Pierce Brosnan in GoldenEye. He has also tackled famous Greek characters, playing Odysseus in Troy and Zeus in Percy Jackson & The Olympians. Most recently, you may have seen him on the big screen as Stinger Apini in Jupiter Ascending.
In addition to his numerous film and television roles, Sean has had a successful career on the stage. In the 1980s, he was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. After taking a break to pursue a career on the screen, Sean returned to the boards in 2002 to play the title role in Macbeth.
Fans have become disquieted by the large percentage of his characters who are killed off during the course of a film or television series. This has resulted in a Sean Bean Death Reel on YouTube (MAJOR spoiler alert). Some have begun to refer to him as a “living spoiler.” Sean is aware of his reputation and isn’t afraid to poke a little fun at it, like in this short he did with Funny or Die.
Sean has spawned a number of other internet memes. His delivery of the line, “One does not simple walk into Mordor,” in The Fellowship of the Ring has been mimicked, photoshopped, purposefully misquoted, and even featured on Google Maps. His character of Eddard Stark has similarly been memed with the line, “Winter is Coming,” from Game of Thrones.
Sean is involved in a number of projects that we’re excited to see come to fruition. The six-part ITV series The Frankenstein Chronicles is currently in production with Sean Bean in a lead role. He will again take up the role of MacBeth in the successfully Kickstarted film Enemy of Man, by director Vincent Regan.
From all of us here at Middle-earth News, we would like to wish Sean a Happy Birthday!
