Sean Bean: Actor from Handsworth, Sheffield, rails at lack of working class actors on screen
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Sheffield star Sean Bean has railed against the class system in television, in an interview to promote his latest role as a ‘baddie’.
The Handsworth actor said there was a “wealth of talent” in the working class population that “you don’t see too often.”
He spoke out in an interview in The Times to promote Disney’s four-part adaptation of CJ Sansom’s first Shardlake book, Dissolution. He plays Thomas Cromwell, who served as chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1534 to 1540.
He said: “There was a point where everyone was upper-middle class, wasn’t there, in television, playing everything? There still is, but there is just such a wealth of talent in the working-class population of this country you don’t see too often.”
The Times notes that except in Game of Thrones, Bean has rarely been allowed to use his ‘rich Sheffield accent’ in US productions.
The homegrown star went on to recall one script that didn’t live up to expectations.
“It was an American production, a series that was promised to be hard-hitting and you know, vital, and all this kind of stuff and what do they call it? ‘Visceral’ — all the usual jargon. And it turned out to be so tame and diluted that I was very disillusioned by it. And, you know, the restrictions that were placed upon the character that I played were ridiculous. And I wish I hadn’t taken it on,” he said.
Sean Bean’s illustrious career includes historical swashbuckler Sharpe, a military fantasist in Ronin opposite Rober De Niro and a jailed teacher in Time on BBC1 - as well as parts in Bond film GoldenEye and Patriot Games with Harrison Ford.