Fic: Love, Actually
Title: Love, Actually
Characters: Actors Viggo Mortensen and Sean Bean
Pairing: See above
Rating: G
Summary: An interview with Sean Bean, a year after the news breaks.
Disclaimer: This is entirely a work of fiction, and in no way represents the actors involved.
Down in a quiet corner of Camden - few and far between these days - I manage to secure an equally hard to pin down rarity. Sean Bean is looking uniquely spry for his age, or perhaps it’s true what they say, that happiness takes the years off better than any miracle face creams-I ought to try it some time. I comment on this as we sit down in his favourite bar. A football game is playing, but it’s neither my team nor his, so I listen with one ear and he watches with one eye, and the interview feels oddly comfortable already, like we’re old friends sitting down to chew cud and watch the game.
“Aye,” he answers, to my observation. “When all me mates are just shriveled old prunes under their Botox, I’ll still be here ageing gracefully, the way it were meant t’be.” He says that he feels younger, too, as though a great weight has been lifted off his chest, and it’s not just that his usual forty a day is down to ten with his new regime. Mortensen is clearly a good influence.
“It were too much. Bless him, he’s no angel either, he’s got a list of bad habits just as long as me arm.” I was going to say his (Bean’s) acting career, but Bean is laughing to himself about something, and since he’s in full flow I let him go with it. “Just the other day he turns up on set with a plastic carrier bag, an open bottle of red wine in one hand, covered up with a paper bag, and stumbles into me trailer. The director thinks he’s a wino, he’s telling me ‘Sean, I’m sorry but this homeless guy’s gotten into your trailer. The police are on their way over, and we’ll have it sorted out in no time.’ Now me, I’m pretty sure I locked the trailer, and the only other person with the key is-you guessed it. So I get back to the trailer, there’s Vig passed out and drooling on this one cop’s shoulder, while the other one’s trying to work out where she’s seen him before. Funniest thing is even Viggo didn’t believe me when he woke up.”
Wow, I say, and Bean picks up on my disillusionment because he’s quick to come to Mortensen’s defense. “Anniversary. He’s a sweet guy, you know. I couldn’t even remember the dates of my anniversaries when I were married, but he can’t get it out of his head. He’s more than he seems. I mean-I know what people who meet him think he is. They see this charming, clever guy, who can speak all these languages and do all these things, who acts as though he were born to do it, but who had to try real hard to get where he is. And he’s all that, sure, but that’s like looking at a circus pony in the ring and thinking that’s all they are. Viggo’s more than his performance, and I’m biased because I love him - not in love with him, because that would suggest that I could ever be out of love with him - but he’s an honest man, with so much more to give than that, and it’s hard to explain.”
I ask him to try. He pauses for a moment, then reaches for imagery that anyone might understand, but what I think is brought to mind when he tries to conjure up an image of Mortensen in his mind. It speaks pretty much for itself.
“Viggo’s like paint, right? So the average guy, he’s like the paints you get in school, only you only get like one or two colours, three if you’re lucky. Maybe you can blend them together and make a few other colours, but that’s all you get. Now Vig-he’s all these colours. Blue, white, red, yellow, black. All these possibilities, you know?”
Right, I say, but you said he’s more than that.
“Uh huh,” Bean says, “Because it’s only when you’re the one painting with those colours, and you’re the one mixing them and putting them on the canvas that you really see how they’re made and how they come together.”
I sigh. “Am I boring you?” he asks, and it occurs to me that this man is just as sweet as the one he describes so vividly. I order another round with a nod to the bartender and look back to my notepad remotely. “No,” I answer. “I just can’t stand Kylie Minogue, and suddenly all I can think of is 'I should be so lucky, lucky lucky lucky. I should be so lucky in lo~ve.’” Apparently I get the song stuck in his head because as we idle to watch a Man City player getting red carded, he begins to whistle it, and flushes adorably when he notices my smile.
Mortensen’s book has made a big splash, I say. Fifteen million copies in just one year. There’s one particular photograph that is - shall we say - a little racey. It’s famous now, and it’s already been emulated in a number of comedies and even a huge box office success. The black and white photograph shows Bean’s paint splashed hand massaging his crotch; the casually opened fly, the long grubby paint mark running the length of his leg. How does Bean feel about this photoshoot and its publication a year later?
“When Viggo took those photos he said to me that what the public was going to get were just snippets; little corners of things that you could look at but never touch. He wanted to show me to the world so that he could sort of say draw a line between what he had and what everyone else had, and what Viggo has is all of me.”
Which is why Mortensen’s Percival Press office and studio have both suffered break-ins, I conclude, and Bean grins at me enigmatically. “Viggo’s no idiot. He knows he can’t just leave all of me laying around somewhere for anyone to find.” Bean looks enough like a naughty schoolboy that I decide not to chide him for inflating his own ego.
None of this, I explain, is why I’m really here-what I really want to ask is what everyone else is wondering, and has been ever since the Jeremy Kyle debacle last Tuesday. After Mortensen punched the host in the face for careless use of offensive language, and once the show’s final interview had been conducted by Bean himself, the four-times-divorced Mr. Sean Bean proposed to his lover of three years, and the entertainment world has been in an uproar ever since. So is it ‘I do’ or ‘I don’t’?
“Well that’s not really for me to say,” Bean says, and his smile takes even more years from his face. He instantly looks younger than I do. “You’d better ask Viggo.”
It’s not altogether an evening wasted. The match between Liverpool and Manchester City goes to penalties, and we watch in cheerful camaraderie as we finish up our beers. But Bean is still smiling, and I realize all too late that he was teasing me with that final evasion. The answer was right in front of me all along.
You can keep Hugh Grant and Colin Firth-this is what love actually looks like.
Characters: Actors Viggo Mortensen and Sean Bean
Pairing: See above
Rating: G
Summary: An interview with Sean Bean, a year after the news breaks.
Disclaimer: This is entirely a work of fiction, and in no way represents the actors involved.
Down in a quiet corner of Camden - few and far between these days - I manage to secure an equally hard to pin down rarity. Sean Bean is looking uniquely spry for his age, or perhaps it’s true what they say, that happiness takes the years off better than any miracle face creams-I ought to try it some time. I comment on this as we sit down in his favourite bar. A football game is playing, but it’s neither my team nor his, so I listen with one ear and he watches with one eye, and the interview feels oddly comfortable already, like we’re old friends sitting down to chew cud and watch the game.
“Aye,” he answers, to my observation. “When all me mates are just shriveled old prunes under their Botox, I’ll still be here ageing gracefully, the way it were meant t’be.” He says that he feels younger, too, as though a great weight has been lifted off his chest, and it’s not just that his usual forty a day is down to ten with his new regime. Mortensen is clearly a good influence.
“It were too much. Bless him, he’s no angel either, he’s got a list of bad habits just as long as me arm.” I was going to say his (Bean’s) acting career, but Bean is laughing to himself about something, and since he’s in full flow I let him go with it. “Just the other day he turns up on set with a plastic carrier bag, an open bottle of red wine in one hand, covered up with a paper bag, and stumbles into me trailer. The director thinks he’s a wino, he’s telling me ‘Sean, I’m sorry but this homeless guy’s gotten into your trailer. The police are on their way over, and we’ll have it sorted out in no time.’ Now me, I’m pretty sure I locked the trailer, and the only other person with the key is-you guessed it. So I get back to the trailer, there’s Vig passed out and drooling on this one cop’s shoulder, while the other one’s trying to work out where she’s seen him before. Funniest thing is even Viggo didn’t believe me when he woke up.”
Wow, I say, and Bean picks up on my disillusionment because he’s quick to come to Mortensen’s defense. “Anniversary. He’s a sweet guy, you know. I couldn’t even remember the dates of my anniversaries when I were married, but he can’t get it out of his head. He’s more than he seems. I mean-I know what people who meet him think he is. They see this charming, clever guy, who can speak all these languages and do all these things, who acts as though he were born to do it, but who had to try real hard to get where he is. And he’s all that, sure, but that’s like looking at a circus pony in the ring and thinking that’s all they are. Viggo’s more than his performance, and I’m biased because I love him - not in love with him, because that would suggest that I could ever be out of love with him - but he’s an honest man, with so much more to give than that, and it’s hard to explain.”
I ask him to try. He pauses for a moment, then reaches for imagery that anyone might understand, but what I think is brought to mind when he tries to conjure up an image of Mortensen in his mind. It speaks pretty much for itself.
“Viggo’s like paint, right? So the average guy, he’s like the paints you get in school, only you only get like one or two colours, three if you’re lucky. Maybe you can blend them together and make a few other colours, but that’s all you get. Now Vig-he’s all these colours. Blue, white, red, yellow, black. All these possibilities, you know?”
Right, I say, but you said he’s more than that.
“Uh huh,” Bean says, “Because it’s only when you’re the one painting with those colours, and you’re the one mixing them and putting them on the canvas that you really see how they’re made and how they come together.”
I sigh. “Am I boring you?” he asks, and it occurs to me that this man is just as sweet as the one he describes so vividly. I order another round with a nod to the bartender and look back to my notepad remotely. “No,” I answer. “I just can’t stand Kylie Minogue, and suddenly all I can think of is 'I should be so lucky, lucky lucky lucky. I should be so lucky in lo~ve.’” Apparently I get the song stuck in his head because as we idle to watch a Man City player getting red carded, he begins to whistle it, and flushes adorably when he notices my smile.
Mortensen’s book has made a big splash, I say. Fifteen million copies in just one year. There’s one particular photograph that is - shall we say - a little racey. It’s famous now, and it’s already been emulated in a number of comedies and even a huge box office success. The black and white photograph shows Bean’s paint splashed hand massaging his crotch; the casually opened fly, the long grubby paint mark running the length of his leg. How does Bean feel about this photoshoot and its publication a year later?
“When Viggo took those photos he said to me that what the public was going to get were just snippets; little corners of things that you could look at but never touch. He wanted to show me to the world so that he could sort of say draw a line between what he had and what everyone else had, and what Viggo has is all of me.”
Which is why Mortensen’s Percival Press office and studio have both suffered break-ins, I conclude, and Bean grins at me enigmatically. “Viggo’s no idiot. He knows he can’t just leave all of me laying around somewhere for anyone to find.” Bean looks enough like a naughty schoolboy that I decide not to chide him for inflating his own ego.
None of this, I explain, is why I’m really here-what I really want to ask is what everyone else is wondering, and has been ever since the Jeremy Kyle debacle last Tuesday. After Mortensen punched the host in the face for careless use of offensive language, and once the show’s final interview had been conducted by Bean himself, the four-times-divorced Mr. Sean Bean proposed to his lover of three years, and the entertainment world has been in an uproar ever since. So is it ‘I do’ or ‘I don’t’?
“Well that’s not really for me to say,” Bean says, and his smile takes even more years from his face. He instantly looks younger than I do. “You’d better ask Viggo.”
It’s not altogether an evening wasted. The match between Liverpool and Manchester City goes to penalties, and we watch in cheerful camaraderie as we finish up our beers. But Bean is still smiling, and I realize all too late that he was teasing me with that final evasion. The answer was right in front of me all along.
You can keep Hugh Grant and Colin Firth-this is what love actually looks like.