Sharpe's Peril

 

Sharpe's Peril
By Michael Deacon
1/11/2008

The Telegraph

As Sean Bean returns for a new series of Sharpe, he tells Michael Deacon

about getting old and filming action scenes in 120 degrees.

 

Guess what type of car Sean Bean drives. Bear in mind that he is a millionaire

Hollywood actor who’s starred in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Troy and National

Treasure. A Porsche 911, perhaps, or a Ferrari Enzo, or a Rolls Royce Phantom.

 

In fact it’s none of those. It’s a pick-up truck. ‘I just think it’s handier,’ he says.

‘I like doing a bit of woodwork, DIY, making shelves, gardening. And you don’t

have to worry about leaving it in the street. I’ve had a couple of cars – BMWs,

Range Rovers, but they just end up getting scratched and smashed.’

 

 

Sharpe's Peril

Sean Bean returns to the familiar role of Richard Sharpe

 

Somehow, a pick-up is a fitting choice. Like his truck, the Sheffield-born Bean

is no-nonsense, tough, battered-looking. You could say much the same about

almost all the characters he’s played – especially the eponymous hero of Sharpe,

the battle-crammed historical adventure inspired by Bernard Cornwell’s novels.

It returns to ITV1 this week.

 

Bean has been playing Richard Sharpe – a fictional 19th-century English soldier

who has fought at Waterloo, in the Crimea and in India – since 1993. Bean

thinks Sharpe’s been so enduringly popular for simple reasons. ‘At the heart

of it they’re very good stories and it appeals to a general audience: kids like it,

men like it, women,’ he says. ‘It seems to have lasted without dating itself.’

But even the most seasoned swashbuckler can’t keep hurling himself recklessly

into battle forever. In the new adventure – Sharpe’s Peril, which, like Sharpe’s

Challenge (2006), is set in India – our hero will show himself to be

uncharacteristically reflective.

 

‘Sharpe can’t just go on fighting like a machine or he could become a bit of a cliché,’

he says. ‘So my interest was to develop his character: how he feels about his child,

questioning after 25 years of soldiering what things are about. You’ve still got

elements of the swashbuckling hero but at the same time you’ve got a war-weary

soldier who’s looking for something more in life. It was the only way to go forward.’

The swashbuckling parts this time revolve around an attack on a baggage train by

bandits.

 

If Richard Sharpe is becoming weary of war, Sean Bean is becoming weary of heat.

Filming in India in March and April this year was gruelling, he says. ‘It was about

120 degrees [Fahrenheit],’ he says. ‘We’d be on set for seven in the morning to

try to get it done in the coolest part of the day, but by 7.30 it’d be 90 degrees,

and I’m running around in corduroy trousers and a woolly jacket. Every day there’d

be a little breeze at about 10.30, which was a godsend – everybody would be

saying, “The wind’s here, the wind’s here…” ’ But if there’s one thing Bean

seems to struggle with more than the sun, it’s dietary variety. The last time

he filmed in India, he brought a crate of 70 steak pies to keep him going.

 

‘I was a bit more adventurous on the grub side this year,’ he says. ‘Most days

I had chicken and chips.’ If that still sounds insufficiently nutritious, he adds

that his diet also included Henderson’s Relish, a sauce from Sheffield: ‘Like

Worcester Sauce but slightly tangier.’ It’s remarkable that he stays in such

good shape – he puts it down to a couple of gym visits a week and plenty of

gardening.

 

He grew up on a council estate but his family wasn’t poor – his father

owned a fabrication shop, employing 50 people. He went to Rada on a

scholarship, graduating in 1983. At first he did a lot of theatre, but he made

his name in television, with Sharpe and the BBC’s DH Lawrence adaptation

Lady Chatterley’s Lover (Bean was, naturally, the virile gardener Mellors).

He was considered for the part of James Bond in the mid-Nineties (‘There

was some talk of me being in the frame for it, but I didn’t audition,’ he says).

Pierce Brosnan got the job instead, but Bean ended up in 1995’s GoldenEye

anyway, playing Bond’s friend 006.

 

He’s been married four times, most recently in February this year, to Georgina

Sutcliffe. In July it was reported that Bean had spent the night in a police cell

following a claim of domestic assault, but he was released without charge.

 

‘It’s all a bit of a misunderstanding and that’s all I’ve got to say on the matter,’

he says. ‘Unfortunately people get the wrong end of the stick so it turns into a

story based on nothing. We’re very happy as it happens.’

 

He says, a bit bashfully, that he and his wife watch the Australian soaps Home &

Away and Neighbours together. ‘If it’s on in the background, I think, “Oh, what’s

happening to them – has he started going out with her?” ’ he says.

 

Next year, Bean will be 50. He’s not exactly entering Harrison Ford territory

(this summer Ford returned to the cinema as all-action archaeologist Indiana

Jones – at the age of 65). But you do wonder how many more daredevil romps

he’s got left in him.

 

Quite a few, apparently. ‘It’s so enjoyable, the physical side of it: riding horses,

sword fights, dodging explosions,’ he says. ‘When it’s 120 degrees, a fight

scene is the last thing you want to do, but the adrenalin pumps, and you can

do anything. But I don’t want it to get to the point where it becomes absurd.

I don’t want to be wobbling around as a 60-year-old, pretending I can still

slice everybody up.’
Sharpe’s Peril is on ITV1 on Sunday at 9.00pm

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