Sean Bean

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.

Sean Bean (born Shaun Mark Bean; 17 April 1959) is an English actor.

Shaun Mark Bean was born on 17 April 1959 in Handsworth, a suburb of Sheffield, the son of Rita (Tuckwood) and Brian K. Bean (born 1934).

He has a younger sister, Lorraine.

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.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Bean became an established actor on British television.

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.

After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Bean made his professional debut in a production of Romeo and Juliet in 1983 at The Watermill Theatre.

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).

In 1989, he starred as the evil Dominic O'Brien in The Fifteen Streets, where he gained a dedicated following.

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).

Bean's film roles include Patriot Games (1992), GoldenEye (1995), Ronin (1998), Don't Say a Word (2001), The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003), Equilibrium (2002), National Treasure (2004), Troy (2004), Flightplan (2005), North Country (2005), The Island (2005), Silent Hill (2006), Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010), Black Death (2010), Jupiter Ascending (2015), and The Martian (2015).

His television roles include the BBC anthology series Accused, Broken, Game of Thrones, and the ITV historical drama series Henry VIII and Legends.

As a voice actor, Bean has been featured in the video games The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Sid Meier's Civilization VI, and the feature films Wolfwalkers and Mummies among others.

Retaining his Yorkshire accent, he first found mainstream success for his portrayal of Richard Sharpe in the ITV series Sharpe, which originally ran from 1993 to 1997.

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.

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.

Since 2002, Bean has been the main voice over for O2 adverts, with the most recent advert released in June 2023.

In 2022, Bean won the British Academy Television Award as Leading Actor in Time, a BBC One drama.