Sean Bean stepped off the plane at Heathrow. It was raining, like it often does in London. Now he was stuck in traffic on the highway.

“It just felt boring, and wrong. I came straight from a magical world of hobbits, wizards, dwarves, and elf princesses.”

The actor had returned home to his native country after more than a year in New Zealand, but he was missing Frodo, Aragorn, and Lord of the Rings already.

“I left the set three months before the others, which felt strange. I wanted to be with them in the fantasy world, not stuck in traffic in England. It was quite an anticlimax.”

Lord of the Rings was Sean Bean’s life. He became Boromir, the warrior.

“If you’re away on vacation for two weeks and become attached to the place, it makes a strong impression on you. Just imagine what it’s like living with something like this for so long.”

He talks about the powerful experience when a helicopter took the actors over the mountain tops, to a set none of them had ever seen before.

“I don’t think any one of us knew what we gave ourselves into.”

The 42-year-old Brit met director Peter Jackson for the first time in a hotel in London.

“The room was incredibly small, and I was reading a scene from the script where I try to steal the ring from Frodo. And I sat there in the chair in the hotel room and tried to enact the role, but it was such a physical scene and hard to do in there… so when I later left the room I felt like ‘shit, I could have done that a lot better’. But I obviously did something right, since I got the part.”

Sean Bean is proud to be Boromir in Lord of the Rings.

“I don’t mind if people for a long time see me as Boromir. I really felt like I was part of something special.”

Some of the scenes were very physically demanding.

“They sucked so much power out of you, physically as well as mentally. Mostly physically. We fought with snow and ice cold water in the winter, and heat in the summer, always wearing heavy equiptment, carrying sword and shield during long battle scenes. You fed off the adrenaline.”

Outside the movie screen, Sean Bean has a reputation of being a ladies’ man. The tough guy from Sheffield has already been through three marriages.

“There were no rumours about me on the internet during the shoot, were there?” says Sean and grins. He adds, “the women on the set were fantastic.”

Liv Tyler is a smart, funny, great girl.” He spent most of the time with Viggo Mortensen, who plays Aragorn in the movie.

“We have the same attitude towards life and hit it off right away. I think it shows in the movie as well.”