Throughout his illustrious career, Sean Bean has had to die onscreen over 20 times, so much that it's become a meme. Over the years, he's been shot down with arrows as Boromir on The Lord of the Rings, beheaded as Ned Stark on Game of Thrones, died from a fall as a James Bond villain in GoldenEye, dismembered in Black Death, and so on.
As a result of his grizzly on-screen exploits, Bean has officially become a meme. Want to kill off a character? Hire Sean Bean! It's become such a popular trope that viewers come to expect Bean to die whenever he turns up in a show or movie. After Ned Stark's untimely demise in Game of Thrones, everyone has come to learn not to get attached to any of his characters.
Of course, Sean Bean is very aware of his reputation. “I realized there were quite a lot of deaths without anybody needing to tell me,” he said in a recent interview with Radio Times while promoting his new series This City is Ours, about gangsters in the city of Liverpool. “It was obvious.”
Bean sees the fact that his characters die as a sign that they're a little more interesting to play. “I was playing some great characters, juicy, nasty pieces of work, and I thought I’d rather play them and die than play a mundane character that lives,” he explained. “But it came to a point with all the memes, and I thought, ‘Maybe I should stop dying as much.’ But it doesn’t bother me anymore. And, you know, I’m not really dead!”
Bean does survive the entire Sharpe series, despite close brushes with death on several occasions, so that's something.
One does not simply *accidentally* get added to the war group chat. pic.twitter.com/qDIosAFtuR
— Brian (@riseofmen) March 25, 2025
Bean's deaths aren't even the only memes surrounding him. He's also known for delivering the iconic line "One does not simply walk into Mordor" in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. That one line and image (we can all picture it) is very much cemented in the meme hall of fame. Obviously, his character dies in that movie, too. That's two memes in one film!
Bean is still at it. He's in a movie called Rogue Trooper coming out this year and will play the villainous Sheriff of Nottingham in an upcoming Robin Hood TV show. I think we all know what's happening to those characters.
To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and Twitter account, sign up for our exclusive newsletter and check out our YouTube channel.