In The Dark
Sean Bean talks scary sheep Empire
Online
April 2006
On a sunny summer day some time ago,
Empire got the chance to sit down
and chat with the very lovely Sean Bean on the set of creepy
ghost
story The Dark. Here's what he told us about the film and his
part in
it...
Can you tell us about your character?
I play a character called James, who is separated from his wife,
the
character that Maria plays, and his child and he lives in Wales.
He's
moved out to the countryside and he's started a new life of his
own.
He's painting and sculpting and he's very much at home with the
elements and the countryside, and he is getting on with this
separation
and the upset of that. Then she rings out of the blue to come
over and
visit him, so it's sort of resurrected, reignited that spark
again
somewhat.
In the middle of that, this great tragedy
happens which sort of brings
them back together in quite a manic, frenzied way, dealing with
the
trauma and the loss and also the resuming of the relationship,
so it's
quite a strange mixture. And it sort of takes it from there really,
and
the hauntings and the various folk stories and myths and legends
that
surround this Annwyn, that people seek a better life by throwing
themselves off this cliff. She's trying to get to the bottom
of this
and I'm quite reluctant. And there's quite a twist at the end.
I
suppose we do get our daughter back in the end, but not in the
form we
originally intended.
What drew you to this? You haven't
done horror before.
No. I've always wanted to do something like this because when
I first
read it I thought it was great, and it scared me. I thought the
character was very well drawn, it was very well written, there's
a
great director, Maria's great and we hit it off really well.
And also
because the material itself is something I'm quite interested
in. I
like reading horror stories, but especially ghost stories like
RD James
who's a Victorian writer of ghost stories. Like this, it's quite
subtle, quite puzzling mystifying stories rather than sheer horror.
So
I've always been interested in that genre – ghost stories.
It's been
good doing it and seeing how it's actually done.
Has it scared you yet?
It is a bit scary. There are all these sheep, these dead and
decayed
sheep, and there’s all the talk of drilling into your head
to get the
evil out. It's a strange mixture. In the midst of all this we've
lost
our daughter, there's all this haunting and strange little girls
running about in different places.
This is a much smaller-scale film
for you, after working on Troy and
National Treasure
Yeah, I went straight from Troy, and more or less the day after
I was
working on National Treasure, and that was for five months and
then I
had a bit of time off before I started on The Dark, and I should
have a
bit of time off after this – about six weeks, which is just
about right
really. So it's been good. I've been able to do what I wanted
to do and
they've been very different which is exciting.
National Treasure looks like it was
fun to make - and you got to play
the villain again.
It was a really good rollercoaster ride of a story. It was great
fun
doing it. I enjoyed it immensely, working with Nic Cage and John
Turtletaub who directed it, and we had a great time on that.
And my
character...I started off quite decent; we started off as partners
together, and I sort of finance this treasure hunt. He's got
the brains
and I've got the finance. But because the stakes are so high
and
there's so much to be earned you learn where your loyalties really
lie.
So he does turn out rather villainous.