Sean Bean: My top five death scenes

Sean Bean has had more run-ins with the Grim Reaper than you’ve had hot din­ners. He’s been shot, skew­ered, flogged and hanged no less than 25 times. Suf­fice to say, Bean knows a thing or two about cop­ping it for the cam­era. But what’s the secret to deliv­er­ing a con­vinc­ing death scene? We sat the mild-man­nered York­shire­man down and asked him to run through his five favourite on-screen deaths. (Warn­ing: here be spoil­ers! Obviously.)

“I don’t think any­one was quite sure how we were going to do it up until the day. We had all these ideas about using hors­es and ropes, but it’s not till you actu­al­ly get on set that you think, ​‘Okay, how am I going to die?’ They want­ed to tie me to these two hors­es, but I would only let them tie me to one. It was dif­fi­cult because you’re work­ing with ani­mals and, from the crew’s point of view, film­ing some­body get­ting split down the mid­dle, or quar­tered as it were, is very dif­fi­cult. They were very safe­ty-con­scious, of course, but I just didn’t like the idea of being tied to two of the bloody things because there’s a chance it could actu­al­ly happen!”

“This one took quite a while, but it was a big pro­duc­tion so we had a lot of time to get it right. It hap­pens at the end of the film, so they want­ed to make a big splash – who­ev­er was going to die was going to do so in spec­tac­u­lar fash­ion. Peter [Jack­son] spent quite a bit of time on that par­tic­u­lar death, chore­o­graph­ing every detail and plan­ning how he was going to film parts of it in slow motion and what music he was going to use.

“There’s a big fight which wears Boromir down and, lit­tle by lit­tle, these ugly beasts get the bet­ter of him. That moment when I’m down on my knees and I’m look­ing up at Lurtz is incred­i­bly pow­er­ful. It’s a very hero­ic death. I had this har­ness on with these arrows fixed into it which was quite heavy, but that was the only way to make it look as if these arrows are real­ly stuck in you. If you look at that scene, there’s nev­er a point where you see an arrow being fired direct­ly into me. It’s done in a very clever way where the cam­era cuts to me at the moment of impact and I react as if I’ve been hit. It’s the reac­tions that make it.”

“Poor Tadgh McCabe. It’s such a sad scene, but also quite pathet­ic because he just can’t get away. It’s almost the way you expect him to go because he’s such a pas­sive indi­vid­ual; he’s been dom­i­nat­ed by his father since he was young and can’t real­ly think for him­self. It’s quite trag­ic real­ly. I remem­ber run­ning away from all these cat­tle and get­ting clos­er and clos­er to the edge of the cliff. It’s real cat­tle com­ing at me and it was quite nerve-wrack­ing in that respect. And then I’m dead in the water float­ing along with these dead sheep.

“We shot in it win­ter on the west coast of Ire­land and we had to reshoot it quite a few times. They were real sheep and some of them had been dead for two weeks. They’d keep putting fresh ones in but there’d still be sheep float­ing past that had been dead for weeks. You can’t react or do any­thing because you’re meant to be dead, but you’ve got these fuck­ing stink­ing dead ani­mals drift­ing by right under your nose. Every time I got in the water, I had to hold my breath. I had a good show­er after that.”

“I died about three times in this one, I think! I get in a big fight with Har­ri­son Ford and even­tu­al­ly he man­ages to get me down and impales me on an anchor. Pret­ty nasty way to go. The pro­duc­ers were hap­py with it because in Amer­i­ca audi­ences are only sat­is­fied when they know for sure you’re dead – and you know I’m dead at that moment! Film­ing that scene was dif­fi­cult because it was very dark and slip­pery on the set. We shot it on a boat in a stu­dio with all these loud thun­der-and-light­ning effects and rain com­ing down on us. It was a long fight and it took quite a few days to get it right. It was pret­ty rough because Harrison’s quite handy, he gets stuck in! It was rocky, but we pulled it off.”

“I’m read­ing the poet­ry of WB Yeats in this aban­doned church when I get exe­cut­ed. There’s some­thing very poignant and hero­ic about this death. I’ve still got the book at home with the bul­let hole in it. It’s an inter­est­ing one because I know I’m about to get it and I remem­ber hav­ing to get into the mind­set of accept­ing my fate. It’s fun­ny… you nev­er real­ly get used to dying. There’s no set for­mu­la for it and no two death scenes are the same. You’ve just got to do what feels right in the moment and make it as con­vinc­ing as pos­si­ble. It’s an impor­tant moment, you’ve got to real­ly think about it. I’m not an expert on death scenes though. Or maybe I am.”