Sean Bean was arrested last week after an alleged bust-up with wife No 4. She says it was ‘nothing to worry about’ – but why does the dashing Sharpe star have such a chequered marital history?

SEAN BEAN knows it�s easy for directors to typecast him. �I can do anger,� the Lord Of The Rings and Sharpe star admitted last year while promoting his new film Outlaw. �I don�t know why and that�s the way I prefer it. 
�I don�t want to start asking too many questions. I�ve got enough stuff going round my head without getting into all that.� 

He may have been talking about his role as an ex-soldier who decides to take the law into his own hands when he is let down by the justice system � �He has a rage in him and sometimes he doesn�t know where it�s going� � but even Bean seemed aware of a parallel between the character�s temperament and his own, sometimes volatile, emotional life. �It comes out and then he regrets it, like we all do, I suppose,� he said.

Bean, 49 � who has made a career of playing moody types including the suave baddy in Bond film GoldenEye � may describe himself as �quiet� but he is no stranger to violent conflict. 

As a young man he was fined �50 for causing actual bodily harm. �It was at drama school,� he once explained. 
�Someone had a swing at me so I had a swing at them and I got done for it.� 

Then two years ago there were reports of a drink-fuelled fight between Sean and his then girlfriend, now fourth wife, Georgina Sutcliffe, who is 19 years his junior, at their �300-a-night suite at the Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills. 

Last Friday Bean was arrested following an altercation at the couple�s London home. He spent six hours in custody following his arrest on suspicion of domestic assault after Georgina � whom he married in February after the couple postponed their January ceremony � called the police following a row. She later dropped her assault claim.

�Everything is OK,� she said on Sunday as the couple put on a show of unity at their home in Belsize Park, North London.

�Sean and I are at home together enjoying the sunshine. He was arrested. Everything was blown out of proportion. The police held him quite a while but Sean is fine and I�m fine. There�s no problem between us.�

Bean would certainly argue that he tries to stay away from trouble. �I play tough parts but I don�t want to live them,� he once said. But it seems equally likely that life with the old-�fashioned Sheffield actor has not, for the four Mrs Beans, always been �particularly calm. This is the man who is said to have interrupted his honeymoon with his second wife, Bread actress Melanie Hill, to watch Sheffield United play York City. 

�We spent our honeymoon on a tour of Yorkshire and it just happened United were playing quite a lot of other Yorkshire clubs at the time�� he explained. 

Following their divorce, she said that he was the kind of man who left his clothes where they fell, although she also said how fond she remained of him. He was described by a friend as a charming but rather old-�fash�ioned chauvinist and he seems content to admit that, despite his impressively long marital CV, he still doesn�t comprehend women. 

�You never understand them and you never really know how things are going to turn out, you have to live day by day,� he replied when asked why he found it so hard to stay married. �I just like the fact that I�m fortunate to be in a situation where my life changes quite a lot. Sometimes they might not be great changes, sometimes they are but at least it�s never unexciting. There�s always something happening.�

It�s an intriguing manifesto for marriage and one that may explain a lot about his chequered romantic history. �Thank God men and women are so different,� he said. �That�s the excitement. That�s what make�s them so irresistible.�

Bean�s voice was memorably described by one interviewer as having been �dragged across cobbled streets in Sheffield which prob�ably don�t exist any more�. And if his attitudes are more familiar to a working-man�s club than to the boulevards of Beverly Hills that�s not so surprising. 

Beano, as he is known to his friends, is a macho Northern male who grew up in the working-class Sheffield of the Sixties and Seventies; a time and place which, for all his Hollywood success, he has never fully chosen to leave. He once kept a Lord Of The Rings press conference waiting � he played Boromir in The Fellowship Of The Ring � until the referee had blown time on his beloved United.

Sean, who was christened Shaun, trained as a welder in his dad�s steelworks, grew up in a two-bedroom council house with an outdoor toilet � his parents still live there � and left his comprehensive school with only two O levels.

But for all the bravado he was also a sensitive child, who says he always felt like an outsider. As a teenager he used to lock himself away in the outhouse until 4am drawing, painting and listening to music. �I�d have a few gin and tonics then wake up the next morning and think, �What the f***�s that I�ve just drawn?� I think everyone thought I was a bit strange but artistic, you know? Which I was.�

Between the ages of 16 and 17 he was at Rotherham Technical College learning how to weld when he wandered into a drama class by mistake and liked it but had to fight the scorn of his mates who thought he was �a f****** poof�. 

But it was immediately clear he had a gift and in 1981 he won a scholarship to Rada. He had already married his first wife, hairdresser Debra James, at the age of 19 because it was the �done thing� but the marriage broke up when he moved to London. 

Fitting in to the world of thespians proved similarly complic�ated. �Soon as they hear your accent they think, �He�s got a whippet, cloth cap, dad works down t�pit�. That�s what you want to rebel against but you end up coming full circle again, thinking, �That�s what I was. That�s what made me�. That�s the spirit of the north.�

It was while training at Rada that the former welder met wife No2: fellow student Melanie Hill, best remembered as Aveline from TV sitcom Bread. They were married for 16 years, had daughters Lorna, 20, and Molly, 17, and for most of that time she was more famous than he was. All that changed when he was cast as Mellors in a TV adaptation of Lady Chatterley�s Lover. 

Sudd�enly he was a sex symbol fending off rumours that he had a reputation for getting too close to his leading ladies. He and Melanie split in 1997. Within three months Bean had duly married again, to his co-star (and on-screen wife) in ITV�s Sharpe, Abigail Cruttenden. 

The marriage produced another daughter, Evie, but lasted less than three years before the couple divorced in 2000. Then, three years ago, he met Georgina, who also trained at Rada, in a bar in London�s Soho where she was working between acting jobs.

In 2006 they were tattooed with each other�s name as a mark of the seriousness of the romance but she seems as feisty as he is. 

Last summer, when she spotted Sean apparently flirting with a female guest at the prestigious Cartier Polo event, she is said to have launched into an abusive tirade at the star. 

They also reportedly fell out the previous summer at the Los Angeles hotel where it was said the hotel�s incident book recorded: �Ms Sutcliffe had numerous bruises on her upper body, face and scratches on her legs.� 

As for Bean, the Four Seasons� security manager apparently said of him: �He had a strong smell of alcohol on his breath and numerous scratches to his face and arms, which were bleeding.� 

However, the couple said that accounts of the row were exagger�ated. Georgina was reported to have said: �Yes, we�d had a row but the stories about heavy drinking and me scratching his face are just rubbish.� And Sean said that the hotel had apologised and told him a security guy had been dismissed. Sources close to the star have indicated that the �odd argument� is �part of the spice of their relationship�. 

It seems, though, that this passion can be strong at times. The cancellation of wedding No4 in January was so last-minute that champagne and even the wedding cake had already been delivered to Brown�s Hotel in Mayfair for the lavish reception. 

A month later the couple had made up and rescheduled the ceremony with Bean�s three daughters, to whom he is said to be devoted, as bridesmaids. 

All appeared to be going well until the weekend altercation. 

Despite the allegations of a temper there is something refreshingly grounded about the Hollywood A-lister who remains a dedicated Sheffield fan and returns home often to watch his team play before going out with a group of friends he has known since childhood. 

�I�m still an ordinary Yorkshire lad and like to do ordinary things like shopping in Sainsbury�s,� he recently declared. �I�ve never forgotten my roots. I still have a taste for Newcastle Brown Ale. I still like to go to the pub.�

A normal man indeed � but you just might not want to be married to him.