Bean there, done that villain thing
For someone who's made a tidy living out of that character cliche beloved of Hollywood studios - the villain with a British accent - Sean Bean was happy to play the good guy for a change in Flightplan.
The classically trained 45-year-old has regularly been cast as the bad guy, ever since his first big- screen role as an IRA bomber opposite Harrison Ford in 1992's Patriot Games.
'I like playing the bad guy,' says Bean. 'You can push the limits a bit more. But recently I've had a bit of a departure from that with Flightplan and North Country in that I've played sympathetic, more compassionate kinds of men, which I've enjoyed equally. I think all people have a dark side and a lighter side and, as an actor, you should be able to draw on that.'
In Flightplan, Bean plays airline pilot Captain Rich, who struggles to make sense out of passenger Kyle's (Jodie Foster) story that her child has vanished.
Bean says he once had an acute fear of flying, which he's gradually overcome. Researching his role for Flightplan helped.
'I learnt that planes are a lot safer than I thought,' Bean says. 'Some of the pilots I spoke to showed me how safe it is to fly - the safeguards, the back-up systems, the amount of training they have to do. I used to be terrified.'
Bean was so wary of taking to the skies in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks that he travelled back to Britain by sea. 'I went back home to London on the QEII. It was quite therapeutic - six days on the sea.'
Any thriller set on board an airliner in today's climate of pan-global terrorism is likely to include references to September 11, and Flightplan is no exception.
A group of Arab passengers quickly become the early suspects, although they're exonerated as the story unfolds.
'It's a sad reflection of the state of the world that we do that - judge a book by its cover,' says Bean. 'The Arabs become suspects because of the colour of their skin.
'Most people are probably more cautious now when they're in lobbies and lounges. I'm not sure that's a great thing, but it's probably good that there's a bit more awareness. But it's not a great way of living your life is it?
