Shaun Mark Bean was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England on April 17, 1959. His parents are Brian and Rita Bean; he has a younger sister, Lorraine. He is 5′11″ and has green eyes and dark blond hair.
Sean left school at 16 with two “O” levels, in Art and English. He had a variety of jobs, including selling cheese in a supermarket, shovelling snow, and working as a welder at his father’s steel fabrication shop before he discovered acting while attending an art course at Rotherham College.
Sean auditioned for London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in April 1980. One of 30 successful applicants (out of a field of 11,000) to win a scholarship, Sean began studying at RADA in Spring 1981. He was awarded a silver medal for his graduation performance in Waiting for Godot in Spring 1983.
Sean’s professional acting debut was as Tybalt in the Watermill Theatre (Newbury) production of Romeo and Juliet in May 1983. He appeared on stage in London’s West End in a number of productions, including The Fair Maid of the West, Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
More recently Sean’s career has focused on film and TV. Although best known in North America for his “bad guy” roles in Patriot Games, Clarissa and GoldenEye, Sean has earned a solid reputation as a “heart-throb” on British television playing Richard Sharpe, the 19th century soldier in the series adapted from Bernard Cornwell’s Peninsular War novels; as well as Mellors in Ken Russell’s BBC adaptation of Lady Chatterley, and Paul, the compromised photographer in A Woman’s Guide to Adultery.