
Age: 67
male
Shaun Mark Bean (born 17 April 1959) is an English actor. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Bean made his professional debut in a theatre production of Romeo and Juliet in 1983. Retaining his Yorkshire accent, he first found mainstream success for his portrayal of Richard Sharpe in the ITV series Sharpe, which originally ran from 1993 to 1997. Bean's film roles include Patriot Games (1992), GoldenEye (1995), Ronin (1998), Don't Say a Word (2001), The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003), Equilibrium (2002), National Treasure (2004), Troy (2004), Flightplan (2005), North Country (2005), The Island (2005), Silent Hill (2006), Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010), Black Death (2010), Jupiter Ascending (2015), and The Martian (2015). His television roles include the BBC anthology series Accused, Broken, Game of Thrones, and the ITV historical drama series Henry VIII and Legends. As a voice actor, Bean has been featured in the video games The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Sid Meier's Civilization VI, and the feature films Wolfwalkers and Mummies among others. Bean has also been the main voice over for O2 and their adverts for over 20 years having originally taken the job in 2002. In 2022, Bean won the British Academy Television Award as Leading Actor in Time, a BBC One drama.

Friends and family are invited to the wedding of Jules Keegan, a magazine editor, and Will Slater, the host of a popular survival reality show called "Survive the Night", which is taking place at an island off the coast of Ireland. The novel begins the night of the wedding, when a storm hits the island and causes a blackout; the lights come up to reveal that one waitress has found a dead body. Moving backward and forward through time, and cutting between the perspectives of various characters, the guests arrive on the island, which is owned by Aoife, a wedding planner, and her husband Freddy, a chef. Hannah and her husband Charlie are guests of Jules, as Charlie is her childhood best friend, but Hannah is suspicious of how close the friends are and retreats to a cave, where she meets Jules's younger half sister, Olivia. The other guests include Will's best man, Johnno, and his ushers, Femi, Angus, Duncan, and Peter, who all attended the same boarding school. Each of the guests is hiding a secret, which is revealed throughout the course of the novel.
