For someone who hardly gave acting a thought until he was 19 years old, Sean
Bean has a pretty impressive track record.

He has enjoyed stints with the RSC (which threw him in at the deep end as
Romeo in his first stage role at Stratford), and has appeared in several well-
received films (Derek Jarman\’s magical Caravaggio and the moving War Requiem
among them) and appeared with reasonable frequency on TV, most recently in the
first of Channel 4\’s series of vignettes, He-Play.

Many actors would envy the diversity of his career, yet Bean, who left school
at 16 and worked for three years as a welder in his father\’s factory, dreamed at
one point of being an artist.