Sean Bean's Many On-Screen Deaths Quiz

Answer: The Fellowship of the Ring

After trying (and failing) to steal the One Ring from Frodo, Boromir (Bean) looked to protect the other Hobbits from capture, but fell victim to three arrows in the chest.

In a 2017 interview with "Entertainment Weekly", Bean described this as "My favorite death scene, and I've done a few...You couldn't ask for a more heroic death."

Answer: Patriot Games

During the filming of this scene, Harrison Ford smashed Sean Bean in the face with a boat hook, leaving Bean with a permanent scar over his left eye. As Bean described it in an "Ask me Anything" on Reddit: "... it was very slippery and chaotic conditions, and it was just an accident, he just slipped and whacked me in the eye."

Coincidentally, Bean's next role was as the title character in "Sharpe", a series based on Bernard Cornwall novels about a rifleman with a noticeable scar on the left side of his face.

Answer: Equilibrium

"Equilibrium" is set in a future where emotions (and anything that trigger them) are outlawed. Sean Bean and Christian Bale play "Clerics" -- government officials who search for contraband literature and art and punish the "Sense offenders" who hide them.

When Bean's character keeps a confiscated book of Yeats' poetry for himself, Bale's character executes him for the crime.

Answer: The Field

"The Field" was based on a 1965 John Keane play that in turn had its origins in the 1959 murder of an Irish farmer named Moss Moore. No man had ever been convicted of the crime, but some locals blamed a neighbor who had been involved in a dispute with Moore over a small piece of land.

In the film, it is Richard Harris who plays Bull McCabe, the farmer whose love for the land eventually drives him to kill the American who tries to buy it. Bean plays Tadgh, Bull's son, who confronts his mad father and is driven off the cliff by mistake.

Answer: Game of Thrones

This death was particularly shocking, as Bean had up to that point been presented as the lead actor and focus of the show. Instead, he didn't even survive the first season. In a 2015 interview with "Entertainment Weekly", Bean described fans' outrage at his death as "flattering", and stated "I was pleased people were saddened to see the death of me."

Answer: Black Death

In this film Bean plays Ulric, a knight charged by his Bishop to investigate rumors of witchcraft in a local village. The village's leaders are not too pleased with the investigation, and eventually kill him and several of his companions.

Carice van Houton, who plays one of the village leaders, would later go on to appear in "Game of Thrones", though she would not join the cast until after Bean's on-screen death.

Answer: Ca$h

"Ca$h" revolves around Sam and Leslie Phelan (A pre-"Thor" Chris Hemsworth and Victoria Profeta), a couple who chance upon a suitcase with a life-changing amount of money inside. Sean Bean plays both the previous owner of the money and his twin brother Pyke, the latter of whom starts pressuring the couple to give back all that money -- which would be a lot easier if they hadn't spent most of it already.

To earn back the money they spent, the couple turns to a life of crime alongside Pyke. A tussle in the car following one of their heists leads to Pyke being shot in the head and killed -- the car compactor was just the most convenient way to dispose of the body.

Answer: Caravaggio

"Caravaggio" was based in part on the life of the Italian Renaissance painter of such works as "The Calling of Saint Matthew". How much of the movie is fact, and how much is legend, remains unclear.

Much of what we know about Caravaggio comes from the records of Roman Police, with whom he had frequent run-ins up until his death at the age of 38. These records mention everything from carrying a sword in public without permission to throwing a plate of hot artichokes at a waiter. Also mentioned is the killing of one Ranuccio Tomassoni, the character played by Bean in the film. However, court records suggest that the cause of the duel might not have been a love triangle so much as gambling debts over a tennis match. Whatever the reasons, Caravaggio was sentenced to death by Pope Paul V and soon had to flee Rome.

Answer: Goldeneye

In the film, Bean plays Alec Trevelyan, a former British agent who faked his own death, fled to Russia, and became the head of a crime syndicate there.

The fight between Pierce Brosnan's James Bond and Bean's Trevelyan is the climax of the film. In a 2019 interview with The Guardian, Brosnan described spending more than six weeks planning, practicing, and eventually filming what he called "the most arduous" fight in the film.

Answer: The Island

In "The Island", Sean Bean plays Dr. Bernard Merrick, the owner of a company that specializes in creating and raising clones of wealthy sponsors. These clones could be used for organ harvesting, surrogate pregnancies, or whatever else their sponsors needed them for.

What Merrick didn't count on was some of those clones being created with memories and free will. It is one pair of such clones (played by Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson) whose rebellion eventually destroys him.