He’s always a good sport for a death scene. Bean has established such a fine tradition of spectacular deaths, his demise is almost a given. He’s been stabbed, shot, sliced, diced, shredded and even killed by a herd of cows.

Here are my favourite death scenes of the great calamity himself.

10. The Island (2005)
The film was stupid, but Bean playing a genetic slaver (who rich people pay him to raise and keep their clones in stasis against the need for a new liver or replacement arm) dies spectacularly –hung by a cable after having been shot through the neck by a grappling hook.

9. Patriot Games (1992)
In this political thriller, Bean seeks vengeance against the English for some sort of heart-wrenching tragedy in his life, but superspy Harrison Ford foils Bean’s Royal assassination plan in a showdown where Bean gets beaten, impaled on a boat anchor, and then blown up. Ouch.

8. Far North (2007)
Shot in the Arctic tundra, Far North tells a tragic tale of love, loss and jealousy, Bean dies by his love’s hand, not only frozen, but naked. It gave me the shivers.

7. Black Death (2010)
Bean, playing a Medieval devout soldier of the Lord is actually quartered – pulled apart while roped to horses galloping in opposite directions – while suffering from the Bubonic Plague. Wow. Talk about overkill.

6. Henry VIII (2003)
The biopic of England’s most infamous monarch, Bean plays lawyer Robert Aske who protested against the religious reforms brought about by schism from Rome. The rabble-rousing former army captain with a vendetta against his King is hung by chains.

5. GoldenEye (1995)
While plotting revenge on the nation he holds responsible for his parents’ death, he betrays his MI6 foster family for world domination. But Bean is in the process crushed to death underneath the burning big-ass antenna he tried to commandeer. Kind of poignant.

4. Game of Thrones, 'Baelor', 01.09 (2011)

Though he’s unforgivably stupid, Bean beheaded by a swift sword to the neck, was kind of sad. His character may have been idiotic, but his portrayal made it all the more entertaining.

3. The Field (1990)
This Irish drama centers on farmers determined to keep their land, no matter what the cost. The dutiful son Bean meets his end when he falls over a cliff running from a herd of stampeding cows. Lion King much? (Yes, this is No. 3 purely because it's cows.)

2. Equilibrium (2002)
Though his role is really short (shorter than most), the soul-crushing Cleric-turned ‘sense offender’ reads Yeats and is shot by stone-faced Christian Bale. In. His. Face. One of his greatest moments, I reckon, as he recites the lines; Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.

1. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Lord of the Rings readers knew it was coming, but it didn’t detract from Bean’s anti-hero death being epic. The orcs came racing towards Boromir, and he stood heroically fending them off in order to cover Pippin and Merry’s retreat, and in defending the two little hobbits, he is shot full of arrows. One. He gets up and fights. Two. He fights again. Then three. He falls heroically, pledging his allegiance to his king. That’s what you call taking one for the team.