10 Facts About Sean Bean You Wouldn't Want To Miss. The Actor Who Played Ned Stark In Game Of Thrones

If you watched the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones, you would agree that Ned Stark’s death was the most shocking death in the whole of the series. Even though it happened in Season 1, no other character’s death ever came close to how iconic his death was. This moment would not have been so effective if not for Sean Bean’s performance.

Sean Bean is indeed a talented actor. And though you may know him mostly for his role in GOT, here are 10 other fact you probably don’t know about the actor.

1. When Sean Bean was a child, he smashed a glass door during an argument, which left him so injured that he couldn’t walk and was prevented him from pursuing his dream of playing football professionally.

2. His full name is Shaun Mark Bean but he is known professionally as Sean Bean.

3. Sean Bean’s family was relatively wealthy. His father ran a fabrication shop which had over 50 employees while his mother worked as a secretary.

4. He first gained prominence for his role as Boromir in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

5. He garnered furthered recognition for his role as Ned Stark in the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones, including roles in the BBC anthology series Accused and the ITV historical drama series Henry VIII.

6. Sean Bean has won several awards during his career including an International Emmy for Best Actor.

7. In an interview with Vulture Magazine, Bean described how he met the producers of Game of Thrones. He said: “We met in a little café in Soho in London, me and David Benioff and Dan Weiss. I wasn’t aware of the books and they’d just sent me the treatment for the first pilot. They described what it was all about, the characters and the fact that I wouldn’t probably last for another [season]! [Laughs.] So they were very candid and I appreciated that. They were very excited and very passionate in the way they spoke, and I was very enchanted by the prospect of portraying this great man called Ned Stark.”

8. He also described how he felt when he discovered Ned Stark was going to die in the series. “It was fine. At least I knew where I stood. You can’t really change it when a good author has wrote it that way. You can’t say, “I want to stay on!” But he had a good innings, the buildup to his death was good, and it was shocking. You can’t really ask for more than that in a character. And they decided to go with my northern accent, and that set the tone for the rest of the people that followed. They all had to learn to talk like me!” he said.

9. Interviewers describe Sean Bean as a “man of few words”. One interview even called him “surprisingly shy”.

10. Sean Bean is a talented Pianist.

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