The actor, 66, has become one of the UK’s most successful actors at home and abroad in film and TV, starring in huge TV series like Game Of Thrones and hit film The Lord Of The Rings and National Treasure
Sean Bean made his mark on the acting world all thanks to a body etching dedicated to his beloved Sheffield United, the Hollywood star has revealed. He got his big break after a top director was impressed by a tattoo in honour of his football team, which read 100% Blade.
BAFTA award-winning Sean, 66, said the shoulder inking made Philip Noyce think he was a real-life hard man – and cast him as the villain opposite the biggest star in Hollywood at the time, Harrison Ford, in Patriot Games.
“So I had a vest on with my arm showing,” recalled Sharpe star Sean. “And I have got a tattoo on my arm, which says a 100% Blade, which sounds quite sinister, but it’s not really. It’s my football team, Sheffield United, their nickname is The Blades. So I’ve got to be a hundred per cent Blade.”
“It looked really hard. And Philip says (to the cameraman), ‘Get that in. Get a hundred per cent bleeding man. Get that in, get his arm in.’ And so he was good for me, so I’ve got a lot to thank him for.“
Laughing about his tattoo now, Sean said it’s no longer a badge of honour: “It doesn’t look like that now. It looks like a bird sh** on his shoulder after eating a lot of prunes and blackberries. But at the time, it looked really good.”
Bean, who grew up in Handsworth, Sheffield, has become one of the UK’s most successful actors at home and abroad in film and TV, starring in huge TV series like Game Of Thrones and hit film The Lord Of The Rings and National Treasure. He admitted that the casting was a stroke of luck given how tough he found learning lines and auditions in 1992.
“You get your pages and the casting director reads and it was quite scary, but I was never very good at looking at lines, looking down and then acting, and I just couldn’t do it very well,” he told a SAG Foundation career retrospective in Los Angeles.
“I’ve never been very good at learning lines either. I didn’t do myself any good. I think. There was lots of stuff and I didn’t get the parts. But then when we did Patriot Games, I knew the lines, because I thought I better get to know these lines because they fly me all the way to LA and I did quite a good performance. That was a big break for me. I mean, that was kind of a long shot. I never really thought I’d get that part, because Harrison Ford, he was very high there, the height of his fame, doing the Jack Ryan stories.
“I got the part and I just couldn’t believe it because that’s the first time I’d ever done a big film and certainly a Hollywood film. And I couldn’t believe that I would be playing opposite Harrison Ford, He he was brilliant and that really kind of moved things along for me. And yeah, it was great.“
This comes after Sean made a very rare appearance with his fifth wife Ashley Moore as she joined him for the premiere of his new TV series, Robin Hood, about the famous Nottingham outlaw who stole from the rich to give to the poor.
The 66-year-old, who is best known for his roles in Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, will star as the Sheriff of Nottingham in the upcoming series, which will be released on November 2 on MGM+. UK audiences can watch through an add-on Amazon Prime subscription.
Posing for photos at the star-studded Hollywood event at The Culver Theatre in Los Angeles, veteran Sheffield-born actor Sean looked dapper in a camel coloured suit, which he teamed with burgundy brogues and a matching tie for the occasion. While Ashley, 40, donned a black trouser suit and white shirt that she accessorised with a Chanel necklace.
And the pair – who tied the knot in June 2017 in a romantic ceremony in Dorset – looked as loved up as ever as they mingled amongst Sean’s co-stars, including Jack Patten – who plays the lead role of Robin – and Lauren McQueen, who is his Maid Marian.
It’s the fifth time the actor has walked down the aisle – and his longest marriage to date. So far lasting eight years, he met former actress Ashley by chance in a London pub. At the time he’d been divorced four times and had three children – and vowed never to walk down the aisle again.
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