Since he began his acting career in 1983, Sean Bean has become one of the most familiar faces around. You probably know him as Ned Stark in Game of Thrones, Boromir in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies, GoldenEye's Bond villain Alec Trevelyan, and the title character in '90s historical drama series Sharpe. In 2018, he won a BAFTA for his brilliant  performance as a troubled Roman Catholic priest in the acclaimed BBC series Taken.
This week, he reprises his role as eccentric inventor Mr. Wilford in the third season of TNT's dystopian thriller series Snowpiercer, so we're brushing up on our Bean knowledge. Here are 10 things you might not know about this incredibly prolific, Yorkshire-born actor.
1. Growing up in Sheffield, northern England, he dreamed of becoming a professional footballer.
"Where I come from, all of us wanted to be footballers," Bean told The Independent. "We played all the time; that's all we did at school or wherever, until it went dark and you couldn't see the ball. But I wasn't as skilled as I thought I was."
Later, Bean worked on the cheese counter at Marks & Spencer and began training to become a welder, before switching his ambitions to acting.
2. He partly based his Game of Thrones character, Ned Stark, on his father Brian, who ran a successful metalworks.
"I always remember him as a very fair man with humor," Bean told Vulture. "Kind of quiet, really. But we respected him very much and we loved him very much, of course. He had a quiet authority. He was a mild-mannered man and a kind man, and I suppose those things rub off in your everyday life. I looked up to my dad."
3. When he lived in London, he would occasionally receive mail meant for Mr. Bean star Rowan Atkinson.
Bean told Vulture this happened "once or twice," adding: "It just said “Mr. Bean, London," and I think they just thought it was me. There was a photograph of Rowan Atkinson for him to sign, and I sent it back saying 'Sean Bean!'"
4. He now lives in rural Somerset, where he is a keen gardener.
"I spend a lot of my time outside when I’m not working, and that was part of the attraction," Bean told The Times. "[My garden has] got mature trees, a large pond with moorhens, an otter occasionally. Lots of birds. I've put nest boxes up and I plant a lot of native trees, a few hundred actually since I've been there."
5. Before he became famous, he starred in TV commercials for the Barbican, a non-alcoholic lager.
In the ad below, Bean's character is able to pilot an airplane that's about to crash... because he hasn't been drinking alcohol during the flight. What a hero!
6. He wasn't the first choice to star in Sharpe, ITV's enormously popular historical series based on Bernard Cornwell's novels.
Paul McGann – a.k.a. the Eighth Doctor – was originally cast as the 19th-century soldier Richard Sharpe, but had to withdraw after suffering a knee injury a couple of weeks into filming. "I woke up in London's Cromwell Hospital to a call from Sean Bean," McGann told The Guardian many years later. "He'd been drafted in to take over the part. It was a gracious gesture on his part. I, however, couldn't work again for a year."
7. He met his fifth wife, Ashley Moore, whom he has been married to since 2017, entirely by chance in a Camden pub.
"We met in a pub, this old pub I used to go in town, called the Cobden Arms," Bean told The Times. "She was in there with friends and I came in with my friend and it was just a chance meeting. I used to go in there now and again, but it was the first time she’d ever been in. We kind of hit it off."
As a teenager, Moore acted in the BBC children's drama series Grange Hill; later, she worked as an assistant to Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton. Noting that she understands what actors are like, Bean told The Times: "That’s quite important."
8. He appears in Moby's "We Are All Made of Stars" music video.
Keep an eye out for Bean looking dapper in a DeLorean.
9. He has died on screen so often – more than 20 times, according to some counts – that he's now inclined to pass on roles that end in death.
"I've turned down stuff. I've said, 'They know my character's going to die because I’m in it!'" Bean told The Sun in 2019. "I just had to cut that out and start surviving, otherwise it was all a bit predictable. I did do one job and they said, 'We’re going to kill you,' and I was like, 'Oh no!' and then they said, 'Well, can we injure you badly?' and I was like, 'OK, so long as I stay alive this time.'"
10. And finally, fans are particularly keen on the way he delivers a certain salty British insult.
One fan has even made a supercut of Bean's greatest "b******s," which you can check out below.
Do you have a favorite Sean Bean role?