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Men who make me happy, #2
Whenever I feel kind of down in the dumps, I pull out certain movies or shows with actors I love. A pretty face always makes me feel better, so I’ve been watching the remaining Sharpe episodes that I hadn’t seen (or rather, movies, since they were filmed separately as movies) because few faces make me as happy as Sean Bean’s. I’m still a bit stunned by the huge fandoms that sprang up over Pirates of the Caribbean and Master & Commander, because so few fans tend to (even with a love of pirates!) like historically set shows and films. A part of me keeps hoping that some of that will spill over onto two other shows I love set during the Napoleonic era -- Horatio Hornblower and the Sharpe series. At least HH is set on the sea, but Sharpe is set on land, alas, so I have a feeling I’ll wait in vain for more fans to come out of the woodwork (and write me some fanfic or make me some vids!).
Sharpe has all the same types of elements as M&C and HH, just without boats (swords, manly men, swashbuckling, manly men, derring do). And mostly it has Sean Bean as possibly the sexiest rifleman who ever shot a gun or wielded a sword. He plays a solider in Wellington’s army who saves Wellington’s life in the first movie (Sharpe’s Rifles), then rises through the ranks -- incredibly uncommon for a lower class infantryman back then -- to become a high-ranking officer of a select group of riflemen, sent on the most dangerous and secret of missions. Sean is so perfect in the role that Bernard Cornwell, who wrote the books, apparently revamped the physical descriptions of the character midway through. He’s got this perfect blend of macho manliness and loving tenderness, something that few actors can really put on screen well -- they often overcompensate in one direction or the other, and Sean never does that. Last year I remember an article in USA Today, I think, where they talked about the new scenes in the extended Two Towers release, and they said, “Fans of manly actor Sean Bean will be thrilled...” I howled over that for days. I’d never quite thought to put such a sobriquet on him, but it really is true to some degree -- he has that unique ability to be incredibly strong and exert a certain kind of machismo while also being believably tender and sweet and quietly sexy, a quality that’s there in only a handful of actors, most notably Russell Crowe.
Sharpe really needed that kind of actor, too -- you had to believe he could beat the shit out of a man much bigger than him to whip him into line, and yet still be so tenderly sweet to the women who fall for him (not to mention to his very young soldiers who need a guiding hand). Sharpe is kind of like the British Army of the 19th century’s equivalent of Captain Kirk -- the babes fall for him right and left, from firebrands to novitiate nuns to enemy spies to upper class English girls. And his men are all a little in love with him too, not to mention Lord Wellington. His first real girl in the series is a ball of fire who leads the partisans in Spain, and the two of them generate enough sparks of their own to create a bonfire. Sean has that rare ability to generate chemistry with a really huge range of other actors, which is not something that can be easily created by the producer types. And that ability comes into play when he has to work different sides of the character, against actors with varying styles.
I think when actors get tagged with that manly man title, they often get stuck in roles that don’t allow much leeway for quieter stuff; fortunately Sean’s been pretty good about testing that, in films as diverse as the dark and depressing film adaptation of the play The Field with Richard Harris, to an adaptation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, to American Hollywood crap like Don’t Say a Word or Patriot Games. Because he can play that Eurotrash bad guy all too well, he gets cast too often as the heavy, like in Goldeneye -- he has, like Crowe again, those kind of eyes that can look either feral and psychotic or gentle and kind, and so he often gets stuck with the former while working over here. He’s also great at goofing on himself -- his cameo in the Vicar of Dibley episode where he appears to the Vicar in her wedding dream was hysterical, and he seemed to know it (plus I loved that the man she was marrying referred to him as Sean Bone).
I was so very grateful to Peter Jackson for casting him as Boromir in Lord of the Rings. At first I was kind of upset, because I didn’t like book Boromir at all, but I was glad that at least he wasn’t playing a nutball. In the end, though, Jackson and Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, through their wonderful alchemy with Sean’s acting gifts, came up with a character I fell madly in love with. He represented all the good and bad in humans, embodied all the nobility, pride, greed, kindness, and honesty that’s in people, creating a character that resonated with a lot of people even in his limited time on screen. Plus, Best. Death scene. Ever. Ever! (And I say that as a connoisseur of death scenes.)
What I think made movie Boromir so amazing was that the character development picked up on what makes Sean so sexy and magnetic to many people -- a kind of rough-hewn quality that also shows refinement if you look under the surface, a quiet nobility that says this is a guy who doesn’t say a lot, but tells you deep things through his actions. He’s got all these very strong, masculine features -- the strong jawline, hawk-like nose, high cheekbones, sandy blond hair, narrow, deep-set eyes, and the deep, plummy voice with the rough Yorkshire accent. Yet at the same time he radiates that interior, almost artistically inclined type of personality, and you totally believe him when he’s tender and soft on screen (which I think really paid off for him in Ronin, where he played a bullshitting macho ass who, when the truth really came out, was scared and weak and miserable). Casting him as Boromir not only changed the character in some ways from the book, but brought a vulnerability to the role that wasn’t on the page, at least for me. Sean in that role couldn’t have been more perfect -- exemplifying how perfect the casting was throughout that movie for most of the characters.
A lot of actors, too, can’t make the switch between historical and modern all that well. One of the great things about so many British and Australian actors is that they have a quality about them that translates better in different eras, and when you go over his credits, it’s interesting to see how much of Sean’s career has him in roles set a long time ago. He’s amazing at wielding a sword and all that, but he’s equally at home in modern clothes, often pointing a gun. And nothing I’ve seen in recent years was as sexy as him simply reading from a book of poetry in the cheesefest that is Equilibrium -- that voice, that face, and poetry, yum.
Because at the core, a lot of what I love about him is that he’s gorgeous. My taste in most actors is quite different from my friends’ tastes, so when I think someone’s gorgeous and they don’t, I get that. But Sean’s one of those guys who, if people say they don’t get the attraction, I want to shout, “are you freaking blind?” It’s hard to see him in his regimental forest green velveteeny uniform in Sharpe, with the super cool boots and the epaulets and the tons of sparkly buttons and frog closures and the tightest trousers ever (stretched over a really, really nice ass), and understand how anyone could resist him. Especially when he’s got the jacket open and the poofy shirt underneath slightly unbuttoned, or when he’s strutting around in a nice medium shot so we can see how provocatively worn and faded his trousers are in strategic places. With the waist-length jacket always offering us a nice view of front and back, it’s hard to believe there are people who don’t appreciate that view.
He’s also one of those actors who's unafraid to share their... charms with the audience. It’s one reason I was initially so hopeful about Venetian Heat, but I have no idea if that movie’s seriously gone off the planner or not. It could have been lovely to have him and James Marsters in that, since they seem to have so little trouble with adventurous roles. Because it was for television, we didn’t always get as much skin on Sharpe as we could have, but what we got was often lovely, plus he was constantly macking with the babes, having this incredibly slashy relationship with his sergeant, Patrick Harper, and being shot, stabbed, beaten, betrayed, you name it.
Sharpe as a series had pretty much nearly everything, but mostly it was a chance to watch a really good actor define a character so completely that you can’t imagine anyone else in the role. It helped that he was so pretty, of course, and it’s fun to watch the series over the years, as Sean grew a little bit older and more rugged (though not in the craggy, scary way Mel Gibson has grown rugged). I wish they’d film some of the other books, but I suppose he’s too old for them to go back and fill all that in. I’m actually getting to the end of seeing the entire series now, catching the movies I’d missed before, and I wish it wasn’t going to end. Because, man, it’s a long, long time until Troy comes out, when we get to see him running around in a leather skirt as Odysseus. Hopefully even more people will discover him after that drops this summer. And now, of course, I'm wishing I had a Sean icon.
Sharpe has all the same types of elements as M&C and HH, just without boats (swords, manly men, swashbuckling, manly men, derring do). And mostly it has Sean Bean as possibly the sexiest rifleman who ever shot a gun or wielded a sword. He plays a solider in Wellington’s army who saves Wellington’s life in the first movie (Sharpe’s Rifles), then rises through the ranks -- incredibly uncommon for a lower class infantryman back then -- to become a high-ranking officer of a select group of riflemen, sent on the most dangerous and secret of missions. Sean is so perfect in the role that Bernard Cornwell, who wrote the books, apparently revamped the physical descriptions of the character midway through. He’s got this perfect blend of macho manliness and loving tenderness, something that few actors can really put on screen well -- they often overcompensate in one direction or the other, and Sean never does that. Last year I remember an article in USA Today, I think, where they talked about the new scenes in the extended Two Towers release, and they said, “Fans of manly actor Sean Bean will be thrilled...” I howled over that for days. I’d never quite thought to put such a sobriquet on him, but it really is true to some degree -- he has that unique ability to be incredibly strong and exert a certain kind of machismo while also being believably tender and sweet and quietly sexy, a quality that’s there in only a handful of actors, most notably Russell Crowe.
Sharpe really needed that kind of actor, too -- you had to believe he could beat the shit out of a man much bigger than him to whip him into line, and yet still be so tenderly sweet to the women who fall for him (not to mention to his very young soldiers who need a guiding hand). Sharpe is kind of like the British Army of the 19th century’s equivalent of Captain Kirk -- the babes fall for him right and left, from firebrands to novitiate nuns to enemy spies to upper class English girls. And his men are all a little in love with him too, not to mention Lord Wellington. His first real girl in the series is a ball of fire who leads the partisans in Spain, and the two of them generate enough sparks of their own to create a bonfire. Sean has that rare ability to generate chemistry with a really huge range of other actors, which is not something that can be easily created by the producer types. And that ability comes into play when he has to work different sides of the character, against actors with varying styles.
I think when actors get tagged with that manly man title, they often get stuck in roles that don’t allow much leeway for quieter stuff; fortunately Sean’s been pretty good about testing that, in films as diverse as the dark and depressing film adaptation of the play The Field with Richard Harris, to an adaptation of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, to American Hollywood crap like Don’t Say a Word or Patriot Games. Because he can play that Eurotrash bad guy all too well, he gets cast too often as the heavy, like in Goldeneye -- he has, like Crowe again, those kind of eyes that can look either feral and psychotic or gentle and kind, and so he often gets stuck with the former while working over here. He’s also great at goofing on himself -- his cameo in the Vicar of Dibley episode where he appears to the Vicar in her wedding dream was hysterical, and he seemed to know it (plus I loved that the man she was marrying referred to him as Sean Bone).
I was so very grateful to Peter Jackson for casting him as Boromir in Lord of the Rings. At first I was kind of upset, because I didn’t like book Boromir at all, but I was glad that at least he wasn’t playing a nutball. In the end, though, Jackson and Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, through their wonderful alchemy with Sean’s acting gifts, came up with a character I fell madly in love with. He represented all the good and bad in humans, embodied all the nobility, pride, greed, kindness, and honesty that’s in people, creating a character that resonated with a lot of people even in his limited time on screen. Plus, Best. Death scene. Ever. Ever! (And I say that as a connoisseur of death scenes.)
What I think made movie Boromir so amazing was that the character development picked up on what makes Sean so sexy and magnetic to many people -- a kind of rough-hewn quality that also shows refinement if you look under the surface, a quiet nobility that says this is a guy who doesn’t say a lot, but tells you deep things through his actions. He’s got all these very strong, masculine features -- the strong jawline, hawk-like nose, high cheekbones, sandy blond hair, narrow, deep-set eyes, and the deep, plummy voice with the rough Yorkshire accent. Yet at the same time he radiates that interior, almost artistically inclined type of personality, and you totally believe him when he’s tender and soft on screen (which I think really paid off for him in Ronin, where he played a bullshitting macho ass who, when the truth really came out, was scared and weak and miserable). Casting him as Boromir not only changed the character in some ways from the book, but brought a vulnerability to the role that wasn’t on the page, at least for me. Sean in that role couldn’t have been more perfect -- exemplifying how perfect the casting was throughout that movie for most of the characters.
A lot of actors, too, can’t make the switch between historical and modern all that well. One of the great things about so many British and Australian actors is that they have a quality about them that translates better in different eras, and when you go over his credits, it’s interesting to see how much of Sean’s career has him in roles set a long time ago. He’s amazing at wielding a sword and all that, but he’s equally at home in modern clothes, often pointing a gun. And nothing I’ve seen in recent years was as sexy as him simply reading from a book of poetry in the cheesefest that is Equilibrium -- that voice, that face, and poetry, yum.
Because at the core, a lot of what I love about him is that he’s gorgeous. My taste in most actors is quite different from my friends’ tastes, so when I think someone’s gorgeous and they don’t, I get that. But Sean’s one of those guys who, if people say they don’t get the attraction, I want to shout, “are you freaking blind?” It’s hard to see him in his regimental forest green velveteeny uniform in Sharpe, with the super cool boots and the epaulets and the tons of sparkly buttons and frog closures and the tightest trousers ever (stretched over a really, really nice ass), and understand how anyone could resist him. Especially when he’s got the jacket open and the poofy shirt underneath slightly unbuttoned, or when he’s strutting around in a nice medium shot so we can see how provocatively worn and faded his trousers are in strategic places. With the waist-length jacket always offering us a nice view of front and back, it’s hard to believe there are people who don’t appreciate that view.
He’s also one of those actors who's unafraid to share their... charms with the audience. It’s one reason I was initially so hopeful about Venetian Heat, but I have no idea if that movie’s seriously gone off the planner or not. It could have been lovely to have him and James Marsters in that, since they seem to have so little trouble with adventurous roles. Because it was for television, we didn’t always get as much skin on Sharpe as we could have, but what we got was often lovely, plus he was constantly macking with the babes, having this incredibly slashy relationship with his sergeant, Patrick Harper, and being shot, stabbed, beaten, betrayed, you name it.
Sharpe as a series had pretty much nearly everything, but mostly it was a chance to watch a really good actor define a character so completely that you can’t imagine anyone else in the role. It helped that he was so pretty, of course, and it’s fun to watch the series over the years, as Sean grew a little bit older and more rugged (though not in the craggy, scary way Mel Gibson has grown rugged). I wish they’d film some of the other books, but I suppose he’s too old for them to go back and fill all that in. I’m actually getting to the end of seeing the entire series now, catching the movies I’d missed before, and I wish it wasn’t going to end. Because, man, it’s a long, long time until Troy comes out, when we get to see him running around in a leather skirt as Odysseus. Hopefully even more people will discover him after that drops this summer. And now, of course, I'm wishing I had a Sean icon.