Biography of Sean Penn:- American film actor, one of the most gifted interpreters of his generation and at the same time a controversial and uncomfortable character for Hollywood, who has taken time to reward his merits.
Sean Justin Penn comes from a family of actors and artists: he is the second son of the marriage of actor and director Leo Penn (1921-1998), of extensive and prolific trajectory eminently televising, and the actress Eileen Ryan, an off- Equally dilated labor.
Biography of Sean Penn
- Born:- 17 August 1960 (age 56), Santa Monica, California, United States
- Height:- 1.73 m
- Spouse:- Robin Wright (m. 1996–2010), Madonna (m. 1985–1989)
- Awards:- Academy Award for Best Actor,
- Children:- Dylan Frances Penn, Hopper Jack Penn
His older brother, Michael (1958), is a singer and songwriter, author of several soundtracks and also occasional actor, while Christopher, Chris (1962), the minor, is an actor. Both have coincided more than once with the cameras, as in James Foley’s Men in a Face (1986), which reunited Sean, Chris and Eileen, his grandmother in fiction.
See Also: Biography of Paco Rabal
In 1970 the family settled in Malibu, where Sean became passionate about surfing. For the rest, he seemed interested in following in the footsteps of his older brother, if not before formed a rock group.
But when he finished high school at Santa Monica High School, he disliked his people with his desire not to go to college and instead specialize in auto mechanics. However, he soon gave up that purpose and made the decision to devote himself to acting.
He studied acting for two years at the Group Repertory Theater in Los Angeles and with legendary drama teacher Peggy Feury.
Twenty years later, he moved to New York and soon made his debut in off-Broadway with Kevin Heeland’s Heartland (1981), which was only held for a month. He would not be back on stage until the spring of 1983, with John Byrne’s The Slab Boys .
But by then he had already gone through Hollywood and was convinced that his career was in the movies. His first films were Taps. Beyond the Honor (1981) by Harold Becker, Amy Heckerling’s Exciting Course (1982), and Bad Boys (1983), a prison drama by Rick Rosenthal in which the great actor.
There was in him, and although little remember the Penn today to that young man of long hair and tattooed arms, a publication of the time included it among the twelve young people with more future of Hollywood.
Rebel actor
They were not mistaken, of course, but the rebellious Sean Penn of those years would make several stumbling blocks before he won the general favorable consideration he has today, even with his unbroken rebellion.
In that ascending line that followed in its beginnings, it is necessary to aim Goodbye to the innocence (1984), of Benjamin Benjamin; Louis Malle’s Crackers (1984), and John Schlesinger’s The Game of the Falcon (1985), although the simultaneous run of his private life left thicker strokes.
This was what the press of the time, who attributed the end of his relationship with his partner in the first of these films, Elizabeth McGovern, to his ephemeral adventure with the wife of the director of the second, a great lady many years older than He named Susan Sarandon , who thus ended his union with the French filmmaker.
As for Penn, already in the following shoot put the finishing touch to these stories with his sony marriage, on August 16, 1985, with Madonna , the most famous singer who gave pop music of the last decades.
It was the turning point in the trajectory of the actor, who was put into an absurdity like Shanghai surprise (1986), of Jim Goddard, that it gave to him Razzie prize to the worse actor of the year, unique stain in its professional curriculum.
But it was above all his wife’s extraordinary fame, coupled with the vehemence of his character, which led to major setbacks for his clashes with fans, journalists and paparazzi, and even suffered a conviction for assaulting a group of them in 1987 , For which he had to spend more than a month behind bars and six other community services.
All this, of course, had a negative influence on his career, something evident if one takes into account that the works of that period arose from his closest environment. This is the case of Colors (1988), his close friend Dennis Hopper, or Trial in Berlin (1988), his father Leo Penn, and even Iron Hearts (1989), his colleague Brian De Palma.
Reward
The winds began to change course after the divorce of the marriage, in January of 1989. After fleeting romances with Pam Springsteen and the then almost teenage singer Jewel Kilcher, in the filming of the clan of the Irish (1990), Phil Janou, met the actress Robin Wright and began with her a more mature relationship.
He had just turned thirty, and his intention to start a different life was evident with the announcement of his definitive withdrawal from the performance.
As it is known, no such thing happened, but it was absent three years from the screens. Meanwhile, he wrote the script and then produced and made his first film as director, Strange Bond Blood (1991), which revealed his pulse in the trade.
During that period, in addition, its daughter was born Dylan Frances (1991), while its companion added the name of the actor to its artistic name and happened to be called since Robin Wright Penn.
The birth of their second child, Hopper Jack (named after the two great friends of the actor, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson ), in August 1993, preceded the fires spread across large areas of California and devastated his home. Malibu.
The family then moved to Marin County, north of San Francisco, where the actor has his own production company, Clyde Is Hungry Films. There the Penns formalized their marital union in 1996.
Penn directed other films. Crossing the dark (1994) and The Oath (2001) made palpable its growth in the domain of the trade, but it was mainly its episode of 11’09”01.
On 11th of September (2002), he won the highest prize in the Venice Film Festival and the Unesco Prize, which revealed it in its splendid creative maturity. The same process and with equal results was operated in his work as an actor, in which he achieved prodigies of unusual expressiveness, tension and dramatic containment.
That rich planting, in titles like Death Penalty (1995), of Tim Robbins ; Trapped between two men (1997), by Nick Cassavetes; Descontrol (1998), by Anthony Drazan.
The thin red line (1998), by Terrence Malick; Chords and Disagreements (1999), by Woody Allen ; I am Sam (2001), by Jessie Nelson; Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River (2003), or Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 21 grams (2003), garnered its first big fruits in Europe, as evidenced by several awards for Best Actor among Silver Bears at the Berlin Festival, Palmas de Gold in the Cannes, Volpi Cups in Venice and the Donosti Prize of the San Sebastian Festival 2003 for the whole of his career, a distinction so premature that the actor thanked with humor :
“It is good that you give it to the beginning of your career. What George W. Bush would have done if he had won the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of ten! ”
In parallel, at the 2004 Academy Awards, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided to do justice to this controversial actor, who had already been nominated for the best actor three times before, and granted him The aforementioned award for his role in Mystic River .
Always faithful to its indomitable character, in July of that same year began the shooting of The last face , an independent film, directed by Erin Digam, in which it shared cartel with his wife and with the Spanish actor Javier Bardem .
A compromised star
Just as he has developed his career behind the backs of the big producers and has been inclined to an independent film, in many cases made preferably between friends (of course they are friends of the caliber of Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon or Jack Nicholson) and from scripts Which brings a social debate, with wisely chosen works, the most outstanding feature of Sean Penn’s personality is his commitment , respect for human rights and a demand for justice that distinguish him from most of his colleagues.
In the late 1940s, his father, a future-oriented Jewish actor, decorated for his services in World War II , was suddenly blacklisted and harassed by Senator McCarthy’s Witch Hunt , until a good Day, tired of clandestine work and figured in other names-Penn Penn, Leonard Penn-decided to give up.
Since then he worked in the shadow, behind the camera, and eventually resigned himself to being the recognized screenwriter, producer and TV director that was.
His son Sean is the living witness to that frustration, and he speaks out loud. In December 2002, when the president of his country sought support to invade Iraq, he traveled to Baghdad to see for himself how much truth was in the official story told by the media, and on his return spent $ 56,000 out of his pocket to publish.
An extensive open letter to George W. Bush in The Washington Post accusing him of violating the Constitution and disguising the true causes of that war “with its simplistic and reckless policy.”