Sean Bean frustrated with getting killed on screen one too many times, says he's rejecting roles where his character dies
Sean Bean is entirely aware that his name has become synonymous with characters that meet gruesome and grisly deaths onscreen and has announced that he's so exasperated with the stereotype that he's rejecting roles where his character does not survive.
His deaths onscreen have become a part of internet folklore at this point, and it comes as no surprise considering how graphic most of those ends are.
His character in the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy, Boromir, met his end underneath a shower of arrows. Ned Stark, the patriarch of the Stark household that he portrayed in hit HBO drama 'Game of Thrones' was beheaded in the very first season. And in 2010's 'Black Death' he gets pushed off a cliff by a herd of marauding cattle and then torn apart.
In total, in his 35-odd years in the entertainment industry that has seen him turn out in numerous blockbusters, Bean has died a total of 23 times, and he's had enough. "I’ve turned down stuff. I’ve said, 'They know my character's going to die because I'm in it!'" he told the Sun. "I just had to cut that out and start surviving, otherwise it was all a bit predictable."
Bean revealed he was about to do the same for one of his roles, only to reverse his decision later because they promised they would only injure him instead of killing him. "I did do one job and they said, 'We're going to kill you,'" he said. "And I was like, 'Oh no!' and 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," he added.
While the 60-year-old is actively looking to avoid roles that see him die, he did admit he took on the role of Ned Stark on 'Game of Thrones' specifically because they told him they would kill him off as he did not want to be a part of a long-running project.
"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.' 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.'"
However, he confessed that he now wished his character had stuck around because of how big of a hit it went on to become. "But I wish I’d have got stuck now! But it was very clear what (GoT author) George RR Martin wanted to happen to Ned — and it did," he added.