Sean Bean doesn’t like flying at all and has a real phobia of helicopter rides. When he was filming The Lord of the Rings in New Zealand, he didn’t take a helicopter to get to the most remote locations. He always preferred the car, even if it took longer.
However, the problem became thorny when it came to shooting the scene where the heroes find themselves on top of a snowy mountain.
The shoot was supposed to last three days, and every morning we had to go to the top of the mountain very early to take advantage of the light.
Sean Bean reluctantly agreed to take the helicopter on the first day. But the experience was so painful for him that he told Peter Jackson he wouldn’t be taking the helicopter again the next day: he would hike to the top of the mountain.
He knew it would take two hours of difficult walking to get to the snowy slopes where the filming was taking place, but he still preferred it to the helicopter.
Peter Jackson recalls this unusual episode:
“We were in the helicopter, with the other actors, and we were looking out the window, and way down there, we could see a little black dot. It was Sean Bean, in his Boromir costume, coming up the slope…”