Sean Bean has become a meme for death when it comes to his acting career. Bean has died 21 times on screen over the course of his career, although there are two very specific roles where his death seeped into pop culture lore. Of course, I am talking about Boromir’s death in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and surpassing even that by a long way his death as Ned Stark in Season 1 of Game of Thrones.

The Game of Thrones death has to be up there as one of the most dramatic and twisty deaths on any medium. Sure, fans of the books already knew the score with Ned Stark before the show even began. I myself had never even heard of the A Song of Ice and Fire books prior to watching Season 1 of Game of Thrones, so I was as shocked as everyone else when Ned Stark lost his head after being the main character of the show throughout that first season. However,  Sean Bean has had enough of death, saying that when he dies now in a role, it’s no longer a shock for audiences, because they are expecting it. Check out what Bean said in a recent interview with The Sun.

“I’ve turned down stuff. I’ve said, ‘They know my character’s going to die because I’m in it!’ 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’. I’ve played a lot of baddies, they were great but they weren’t very fulfilling — and I always died.”

And Bean on that very famous death in Thrones

“I’d read the Game Of Thrones books and they said to me, ‘You do die in this, but it’s near the end of the series’. And I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, fair enough’. So they made it very clear at the time I was going to die, and I thought, ‘I don’t want to get stuck in one of these series that lasts seven years’. But I wish I’d have got stuck now! But it was very clear what (GoT author) George R.R. Martin wanted to happen to Ned — and it did.”

I guess it’s not so bad to be famous for dying spectacularly on screen, until it becomes something you get typecast into. The reason Ned Stark worked so well, was because the books were a lot less famous back then. People tuning in to HBO without the book knowledge saw a big star like Sean Bean as the lead and just assumed he would have the usual plot armor that all leads get in stories.

RELATED: Game Of Thrones Creator Gives Update On Prequel Shows From HBO

So let’s not kill Bean for a while on screen, so we all forget the meme and then he can come back with another famous death before he retires to round out the trilogy, and by then we won’t see it coming again, ha.

What do you think of Bean’s commitment to avoiding death, were any of you green going into that first season of Game of Thrones like me? Let’s toast the many deaths of Sean Bean’s characters in the usual spot below.

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SOURCE: The Sun

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