Sean Bean

Biography: An English film and stage actor. Bean is best known for starring roles in the films The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, GoldenEye, Patriot Games, Troy, National Treasure and Silent Hill. Bean has acted in a number of television productions, such as ITV?s Sharpe, and most recently HBO?s Game of Thrones, as well as performing voice work for computer games, most famously voicing Martin Septim in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and in television adverts - most recently for the O2 mobile network and the Why Pink Floyd...? campaign.

Bean was born Shaun Mark Bean in the Handsworth district of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, the son of Rita (n�e Tuckwood) and Brian Bean. Bean?s father owned a fabrication shop, which he had set up with a colleague. The business employed 50 people, including Bean?s mother, who worked as a secretary. He has a younger sister named Lorraine. Despite becoming relatively wealthy (his father owned a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow), the family never moved away from the council estate, because they preferred to remain close to friends and family.

As a child, Bean smashed a glass door due to an argument over scissors. It left a piece of glass embedded in his leg that briefly impeded his walking and left a large scar. This accident prevented him from pursuing his dream of playing football professionally. In 1975, Bean left Brook Comprehensive School with two O Levels in Art and English. After a job at a supermarket and another for the council, Bean started working for his father?s firm with a day release at Rotherham College of Arts and Technology to take a welding course. While at Rotherham he stumbled into an arts 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 came across a drama course for which he subsequently enrolled. After some college plays and one at Rotherham Civic Theatre, he applied for and received a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), starting a seven term course in January 1981.

He graduated from RADA in 1983 having won the Silver Medal for his performance in Waiting for Godot. He made his professional acting d�but in 1983 at the Watermill Theatre in Newbury, Berkshire as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet. His early work involved a mixture of stage and screen work. As an actor, he adopted the Irish spelling "Sean" of his first name. His first national exposure came in an advert for non-alcoholic lager. 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 in 1986 when he played Ranuccio Tomassoni in Derek Jarman?s film Caravaggio. He then reunited with the director on War Requiem in 1988, which also starred Sir Laurence Olivier. In 1989 he starred as the evil Dominic O?Brien in Catherine Cookson?s "The Fifteen Streets" where he gained a dedicated following.

His 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. Bean was not the first actor to be chosen to play Sharpe, but Paul McGann, the first choice, was injured while playing football two days into filming. Initially, producers tried to work around McGann?s injury, but it proved impossible and Bean received the call

Bean has been married and divorced four times. He married his high-school sweetheart Debra James on 11 April 1981. The marriage ended in divorce in 1990. He met actress Melanie Hill at RADA, and they married on 27 February 1990. The couple?s have two daughters Lorna and Molly. Bean and Hill?s marriage ended in divorce in August 1997.

During the filming of Sharpe, Bean met actress Abigail Cruttenden, and they married on 22 November 1997 and have one daughter, Evie Natasha born in 1998. Bean and Cruttenden divorced in July 2000. Bean began dating actress Georgina Sutcliffe in 2006. After cancelling their planned January 2008 wedding on the eve of the ceremony for "personal reasons", Bean married Sutcliffe at the Marylebone Register Office in London on 19 February 2008. They later divorced in December 2010