London: 'Regret to Inform you I'm Not Dead, Not as Yet' - Mr Bean

London: Over the last few days, the fans of British actor-comedian Rowan 'Mr Bean' Atkinson were put in a state of gloom with a report of his passing away.
But sources close to him have confirmed that the reports are untrue and baseless. 'Some people have just played a hoax, that's all,' said an associate. The same hoax had been played once earlier in early 2012.
The character of Mr Bean he played over the past two decades have won him millions of fans the world over. The image was so inseparable that a large number of them either are not aware of or had forgotten and did not care about his real name, Rowan Atkinson.

He had expressed in close circles around 2010 that he wanted to shed the image and get rid of the Mr Bean tag. He was looking for some serious roles as an actor. He had confessed to his immediate friends sometime in 2011, when he was 56-years-old, that playing the young-at-heart role of Mr Bean was taking a heavy toll on his body.
He has been credited with saying, "The stuff that has been most commercially successful for me, basically quite physical, quite childish I increasingly feel I'm going to do a lot less of. Apart from the fact that your physical ability starts to decline, I also think someone in their fifties being childlike becomes a little sad. You've got to be careful."

His last appearance as Mr Bean was perhaps at the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony.  The rumors that spread earlier this week emanated from a report that he had been dropped from the cast of the movie, 'Johny-3', which reportedly led to taking a drastic step. Thankfully it was not true.
His fans would always like to see him in different roles, while there will still be small number who would refuse to see him in any form other than Mr Bean. Here's wishing him a long life.

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