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Why does Sean Bean look so familiar? Sure, every Hey! It's That Guy!, by definition, looks familiar. And certainly Sean Bean does when he first appears in The Fellowship of the Rings. (I could mention here that his character is named Boromir, but does anyone really register any of the names of the characters in that movie, outside of Frodo and Gandalf?) In fact, I'd bet that at each screening of Rings, when Sean Bean shows up onscreen, thousands of moviegoers everywhere whisper, as I did, those four magical, wonderful words: "Hey! It's That Guy!"

Yet when I looked up Mr. Bean's résumé, I was surprised to see that he only had four credits that were even vaguely familiar to me: Goldeneye (never saw it), Ronin (saw it; barely remember it), Patriot Games (think I saw it; can't remember if it was that or Clear and Present Danger), and Don't Say A Word (definitely didn't see it, though that sing-songy "I'll never tell" still haunts me in my sleep). Sean Bean also has about two thousand other screen credits, accrued while starring in what I can only assume is some British TV series called Sharpe. Which, again, raises the question: So why then does Sean Bean look so familiar? ["Because he, for some reason, appears in a TV commercial for No-Rub Express contact-lens cleaner?" -- Wing Chun]

It must be because he is so quintessentially a Hey! It's That Guy! ­- in looks, type, and demeanour -­ that you feel like you've seen him before, even when you see him for the very first time. There's at least a half dozen generic action movies that, if someone told me that he'd appeared in them, I'd believe them, even though I've actually seen those movies (Nick of Time, Ransom, and The Negotiator, for example). Also, he is so intrinsically a menacing rogue that, when I read an interview with him in which he talked about how nice it was to finally play a hero and not a menacing rogue in The Fellowship of the Rings, I had to stop and think for a moment, because I was pretty sure he had played a menacing rogue in The Fellowship of the Rings.

So, Mr. Bean, welcome to the club. We're sure you'll pile up an impressive list of rogues before you're done, but as far as we're concerned, you had us the first time we didn't see you in Ransom.