On a sweltering set in India, Sean Bean tell Karen Hockney why
he
decided to revive the role that made his name
It is 80 degrees in the Samode Valley,
in Northern Rajasthan, and Sean
Bean is leading a tired column of soldiers across the desert
towards an
isolated fort. Inside, dozens of extras dressed as villagers
and
soldiers mill about beside small fires, while horses, camels
and goats
stand tethered at open stalls.
The camp is taken by surprise when a
renegade regiment arrives and
opens fire without warning. As the shots ring out and bloodied
bodies
fall in the sand, Bean springs into action, rifle-butting and
shooting
enemy soldiers before being shot and wounded himself. So begins
Sharpe’s Challenge, the 15th television adventure based
on Bernard
Cornwell’s bestselling historical novels, the cornerstone
of which is
his portrayal of Richard Sharpe.
Filming in India means 4.30am starts
for the 46-year-old Bean who,
despite the early call, is looking his rough-and-ready best in
a
scarlet military jacket, dusty white breeches and black boots.
His take
on Sharpe’s appeal is simple: “All the guys on this
love the action
stuff because you can’t do it in real life.”
His screen roles have tended to be rough
diamonds and anti-heroes. His
Mellors in the BBC adaptation of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s
Lover caused Middle-England outrage at the graphic sex scenes
with
Joely Richardson, and he held his own as the avenging terrorist
hunting
Harrison Ford in Patriot Games and as 006, the rogue agent who
battled
Pierce Brosnan’s Bond, in Goldeneye.
Sharpe is no exception: a soldier who
is loyal and unwavering in his
duty but also prepared to bend the rules to cut a better deal
for
himself and his troops. In short, an officer who inspires respect
from
men, and the desire to tame him from women.
An intensely shy man, Bean, too, has
a reputation as a loner, something
the actor feels he doesn’t really deserve: “I like
my own company and I
like time on my own, but I’m not a hermit. I do like other
people’s
company, too.”
His bluff northern exterior, fanatical
devotion to Sheffield United
Football Club (he sports a Blades tattoo and confides: “I’m
still
passionate about them. I’ve been listening to their games
on the
internet,”) and broad Yorkshire accent shore up his public
image as one
of Britain’s most famous working-class outsiders.
Yet the truth is more complex. Bean
is the son of a Sheffield
steelworker, but his father also owned the local factory where
Sean was
an apprentice welder for a while. “I suppose we were working
class, but
we drove to work in a Silver Shadow,” he recalls. “We’d
get in the
Rolls-Royce. I’d put me steel-capped boots on, stop at the
top of the
road, get the Daily Mirror and jump back in the Rolls. It was
quite
bizarre.”
On leaving RADA in the early 1980s,
he built a solid career with roles
in the big-screen thrillers Ronin, Don’t Say a Word and
Bravo Two Zero,
in which he played the SAS hero Andy McNab. But it was the troubled
warrior Boromir in The Lord of the Rings that propelled him into
Hollywood’s inner sanctum. Now he gets first look at films
such as
North Country opposite Charlize Theron, Troy with the likes of
Brad
Pitt, Flightplan alongside Jodie Foster and the thriller Silent
Hill,
released on Friday.
“I’ve been really busy in
the past two years and I’ve managed to
diversify,” he says as he sips at a pint of beer that he’s
somehow
acquired as protection against the Indian heat. “Before
that, there was
a point when I wasn’t really doing anything, I was just
playing bad
guys every now and then. The trouble is, I play them well so
you keep
getting asked to play them again! Then things started changing
with The
Lord of the Rings.”
That he should return to the small screen
for ITV1’s Sharpe’s Challenge
after an eight-year break is perhaps surprising, but it’s
indicative of
his down-to-earth attitude that he holds the television series
that
made his name in such high regard.
In another echo of Sharpe, Bean’s
loner status extends to his romantic
life, too. He has been married three times, to childhood sweetheart
Debra James, the actress Melanie Hill and his Sharpe co-star
Abigail
Cruttenden, but is currently living a nomadic life between his
home in
Hampstead, North London, and Los Angeles. It clearly suits him,
although he tries to spend as much time as he can with his three
daughters, Lorna, 18, Molly, 14, and Evie, 7.
“I have been on the road for 18
months of the past two and a half
years,” he says. “It is hard on family life. It would
be nice to take a
break because I’ve been working non-stop and I feel a bit
weary.”
He has been dating Georgina Sutcliffe,
a 27-year-old bar worker, since
last summer and, from the way he talks, guardedly yet faintly
embarrassed at the idea of sounding offish, there’s no indication
that
he is planning to settle down again.
“I see Georgina from time to time
but we don’t live together,” he
mumbles self-consciously. “It’s hard when I’m
away, but I think she and
my kids understand that. It’s part of my job.”
His pursuits away from work also point
to a more sensitive side. He is
at his happiest pottering about in his Hampstead garden, or reading
Oscar Wilde. “I might go to my local for a pint, but I’m
not the kind
of guy who is out every night partying,” he says. “It’s
too knackering.
I love losing myself in books and an early night.”