This ‘Lord of the Rings’ Actor Climbed a Mountain To Get To Work

The actor's fear of flying sent him hiking.

Odds are good that if someone was offered a helicopter ride to work every day, they'd take it. And if it was a free ride? Absolutely, they'd take it. Get dropped off on top of your building downtown, take the elevator down — a freaking sweet deal. To hell with public transport! Now, what if you worked at the top of a mountain, would one take a helicopter ride then? Yes, yes, a hundred times yes. But what if you were actor Sean Bean? You'd forego the helicopter ride and climb the mountain. Esqueeze me, baking powder? That's right, Bean climbed the mountain during the filming of The Lord of the Rings trilogy because helicopters scare the s**t out of him.

But first, let's look at Bean's long road to The Lord of the Rings. Bean was born on April 17, 1959, and in his teens began working as an apprentice in his father's welding company. He quickly discovered welding wasn't his passion, and left the trade for art school. He managed to make his way to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Acts, graduated in 1983, and had his professional stage debut in an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet with the Royal Shakespeare Company. His first major breakthrough came with the British television series Sharpe, which ran from 1992 to 1997, where he played a fictional British soldier in the Napoleonic Wars by the name of Richard Sharpe.

His first notable Hollywood role was opposite Harrison Ford in 1992's Patriot Games, playing Irish terrorist Sean Miller. Then in 1995, Bean landed the enviable role as the antagonist in the James Bond thriller Goldeneye. The film, the first with Pierce Brosnan as Bond, was hailed as a successful rebirth of the James Bond franchise, a franchise which had laid dormant for six years following 1989's Licence to Kill. Bean's presence as the villainous Alec Trevelyan — a former 00 agent and friend of Bond, believed to be killed but now a vengeance seeker hell-bent on global destruction — went far in that film's success. Bean would follow up Goldeneye with a few more movie gigs before landing arguably his most prominent role as Boromir in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

RELATED: Sean Bean's 10 Most Iconic Death Scenes, Ranked by Gruesomeness

In an interview with Bronte Coy of news.com.au, a helicopter pilot with Glacier Southern Lakes Helicopter named Alfie Speight who ferried cast and crew to the top of the mountains and back during filming recounted many stories, one of which details how Bean's fear of flying became quickly escalated on the first trip. Speight speaks on how the actors behind Merry and Pippin, Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd, told him that Bean was a flying enthusiast, which led to Speight adding some special air tricks during the flight. A clearly unenthused Bean, when dropped at the top of the mountain, turned to the director and said, “Sorry mate, no more helicopters, I’m done.”

As director Peter Jackson recalls in the Josh Gad-led "One Zoom to Rule Them All" reunion, "Sean just said, 'Look, I can't do it. I'll come very, very early, I'll get all my gear, all my Boromir gear, and I'll start to climb, just on foot.' So we're flying up, and I look down and there's this vast, vast cliff in the mountain, and I could see Sean like a human fly climbing up a nearly-vertical rock face." While the two-hour hike each morning wasn't easy, Bean was true to his word and was ready for filming on time. Of the experience, Bean said on a 2012 appearance on The Jonathan Ross Show, “I used to get on my costume and the hair and everything, and then I would walk about a half an hour up quite a steep hill. And there was this ski lift, and so I’d sit on that, and they’d wire me up. Dressed as Boromir! And they’d drop me off there, and I’d hike another half a mile just because I didn’t want to get on the helicopter.”

In an interview with The Guardian, Bean admits that his fear of flying was crippling and if he did have to fly he would grip the armrest tightly, almost in tears. To cope, Bean also admitted to drinking quite a bit before getting on the plane, drinking quite a bit more while on it, and being three sheets to the wind by the time they had reached their destination. Yet the tragedy of 9/11 led to Bean facing his fear. "Suddenly, around 9/11, there was all this talk of possible attacks on planes and long-range missiles from terrorists," Bean recounts, "I thought: 'Why am I worrying about engine failure if there’s all this going off?' And somehow I got over it. I still can’t stand turbulence, but I’m much better now, thank God."

Bean's phobia didn't seem to impact his career in any fashion and, ironically, he would take on the role of airplane pilot Capt. Marcus Rich in 2005's Flightplan. Since his days of climbing mountains in Boromir gear, Bean continues to share his talents in a wide variety of roles, perhaps most famously as Eddard "Ned" Stark in HBO's juggernaut Game of Thrones. He even has a reputation for playing characters that have a tendency to not make it to the end of their projects, which prompted him to reveal in the same interview with The Guardian that he used to read his scripts from back to front to see how long his characters would last.

While Bean isn't currently attached to any upcoming films, his last film Knights of the Zodiac did reunite him with his Goldeneye cast mate Famke Janssen. With the experience gained from the filming of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, though, Bean would be a perfect lead for a remake of 2013's Beyond the Edge, a film about the first successful Everest climb in 1953 by Edmund Hillary and Tenzig Norgay... and he wouldn't even have to bring his sword and shield with him!

Lloyd 'Happy Trails' Farley: the man, the myth, the legend. He is a master of puns, with one pun book - Pun And Grimeish Mint - already released and another - Pun And Grimeish Mint II: The Empire's Spice Rack - in development. A devotee of B-films (Ed Wood in particular) and Calgary Flames hockey, Lloyd also holds fast to the belief that all of life's problems can be answered by The Simpsons, Star Wars, or The Lion King.Happy trails.