Only in Hollywood

[Only IN Hollywood] Why Sean Penn is looking forward to 77

Ruben V. Nepales

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[Only IN Hollywood] Why Sean Penn is looking forward to 77

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - MARCH 08: Sean Penn speaks onstage at the "Meet Me In Australia" event benefiting Australia Wildlife Relief Efforts at Los Angeles Zoo on March 08, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. Kevin Winter/Getty Images/AFP

AFP

The actor, who just turned 60, talks about getting married, directing his own daughter, and working on improving the US's COVID response

“As for a celebration, I have an extraordinary woman,” said Sean Penn, who turned 60 on Monday, August 17. It turned out that the two-time Oscar and Golden Globe best actor, interviewed before his big birthday milestone, had another celebration in mind.

On July 30, the bad boy-turned-activist married Australian-American actress Leila George, his third wife after Madonna and Robin Wright. Leila, 28, is the daughter of actors Greta Scacchi, who is the same age as Sean, and Vincent D’Onofrio, 61.

He was asked about his coming 6-0 birthday plans in a video call in which he sported wild blonde-gray hair and a tee that read, “Actually, I’m in Havana.” The actor once had an hours-long chat with Fidel Castro in Havana after they were introduced by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

One of the finest actors of his generation began answering by saying, “I am madly in love with a wonderful Australian woman. For anyone who knows wonderful Australian women, they are in command of any celebrations that may not happen. So that’s lying in wait for me or it’s not. In either case, it would be because she is the chief of staff.”

Sean Penn in the video call with the columnist. Photo courtesy of HFPA

It’s almost hard to imagine that Sean, who broke through as stoned surfer Jeff Spicoli in 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High, is a senior citizen.

Speaking of that comedy which has become a pop culture touchstone, there will be a virtual live table read of the coming-of-age classic on August 20 on Facebook Live and TikTok. Sean, who will not play his iconic stoner dude character, leads an all-star cast that includes Jennifer Aniston, Julia Roberts, Matthew McConaughey, Morgan Freeman, Henry Golding, Shia LaBeouf and Dane Cook.

The man who gave us memorable performances in MilkDead Man Walking and Mystic River is actually looking forward to be much older than 60.

“It’s about time,” said the actor who called from his LA home. “I have always thought of myself as a natural born 77, so I have 17 years before I am going to feel like me.  That’s the main thing. Finally, get 60 done so I can get to 61, so I can get to 62 and onwards to 77.”

“People ask that question on psychological profiles – at what age do you see yourself most comfortably? For me, I don’t know why but it is always 77.”

One of Hollywood’s most outspoken liberals, who’s had his share of controversies, actively leads Community Organized Relief Effort or CORE, an emergency relief organization that helps the US combat COVID-19. Sean’s wife, whom he has dated since 2016, is also involved with CORE.

“She is currently in Georgia where they are working with the country to set up scale contact tracing to match our testing in remote sites in the immigrant communities,” Sean said of Dylan at the time of our interview.

“And because she is a diligent worker in COVID-19 response, any celebration that might happen will be under very rigid policy with very few people.”

The couple’s wedding was also low-key. In keeping with the coronavirus pandemic times, Sean said in his guest appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers that he and Leila had a “COVID-19 wedding…A county commissioner (was) on Zoom and we were at the house.”

The actor-director relishes that Leila, being an actress herself, with credits that include Mortal Engines,The Long HomeThe Kid and Animal Kingdom, is also a film buff. He described Leila in their pre-pandemic days, “The girl I fell in love with…(enjoys) walking along to a dark movie theater with a lot of strangers and having an experience that would stay with us forever, as it happened so many times in my movie-going youth.

“Generationally, we meet someone our own age who is a movie fan. You say the name of a movie, they know it – they know who the actors were, the lines or that scene. That happens so rarely today.” But with Leila, he found a partner who shares his zeal for the same films, despite their age difference. Sean has also dated actresses Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon and singer Jewel.

Even with his intense involvement with CORE, Sean, the son of two actors, Leo Penn and Eileen Ryan, stressed that he is still passionate about his film career. “I’m not fed up with any of it at all. I’m in love with movies. I’m among the many brokenhearted who have watched the thoughtful pieces move to television. There are extraordinary things on television. I don’t know if Pandora’s box can be closed.”

On the post-pandemic status of cinema, he remarked, “I don’t know if movie theater chains will be able to function on anything beyond franchise films. I don’t know where it’s going to go. I don’t know if the generation will suddenly demand thought, as it happened in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. We look at the history of American cinema then.”

“And will the demand be there for the theatrical experience or am I a dinosaur in this thought? I just don’t know.”

Also a director noted for Into the Wild, Sean is filming an untitled documentary on Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed in 2018 after criticizing his government.

But Sean is especially excited about directing and starring in Flag Day, because Dylan Penn, his daughter with Robin Wright, is also in the cast. The proud dad shared, “On day one of shooting on Flag Day, I said ‘action’ the first time on something Dylan was doing. I watched and felt every jaw on the crew drop. She turned out to be just a miraculous truth machine and it was really thrilling.”

Sean, who has another child, Hopper Jack Penn, with Robin, pointed out, “I’d never directed myself before. And to do that while taking the position of caring for my daughter’s experience on it would have just been way too much, had Dylan not been able to bring what has been a lifetime of knowledge of what it is to act on film, from the technical point of view to the inspired offering.”

“She just had both and didn’t make it easy because Aries women don’t (laughs). But she made it possible, which was its own miracle. I’m in post-production now. It’s pretty exciting for your favorite actress in the world to be your daughter and to watch her and work with her in the editing room every day. It’s really a lucky thing.”

CORE, which Sean founded in response to the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake, is now administering free COVID-19 tests in the US.

“We were able to get some extended grants to expand in California beyond Los Angeles,” Sean said. “With an extraordinary grant from the Start Small fund of Jack Dorsey, with an initial $20 million, we were able to expand across the United States and to eight areas, with multiple sites in each – New York, Washington, DC, North Carolina, Chicago, Detroit, Navajo Nation, Atlanta and New Orleans.”

When asked if it was not too personal to inquire if he himself has had COVID-19, Sean quickly and firmly answered, “My feeling about this, and it’s a strong feeling, is that it should not be considered too personal a question of anyone. I will tell you that so far, I have not contracted COVID.

“But part of that is because I am very diligent. Most of our work is outdoors. We even have most of our meetings outdoors. We distance as much as we can and we wear our masks. Our teams are tested constantly.”

“With around a thousand volunteers nationwide, I think we had eight of our staff test positive, all thank God asymptomatically in the regard that they didn’t suffer through those. We had to do a retest of everyone that had any contact with them.  But I have not gotten sick and I hope not to. It can happen to any of us.”

“We still don’t really know all the science. It also seems to be a question of how much viral load you take on.  But all of those things are better spoken to by Tony Fauci than me. This is a very real thing. When we think about 143,000 (more than 170,000 since this interview) deaths in America (since March), if that were an active shooter scenario, we’d all be respecting what was happening and dealing with it.”

Without naming President Donald Trump, Sean added, “But this lives in a zone of human terror that lends itself to cowardice.  And if leadership exemplifies cowardice, good people will succumb. When I see people who self-righteously say this thing doesn’t exist, or I am not going to wear a mask and you can’t contact trace me, or you are violating my civil liberties, all I see is somebody saying, ‘mommy, I’m so scared.'”

“Those are the examples of cowardice in our time. Those are the greatest threats. We all have to stand together. I  have many friends who have suffered tremendously. I have acquaintances who have died. I have countless friends who have tested positive but for the most part, were asymptomatic.”

On how he is doing personally, in this period when most of us are confined in our respective homes, when it’s like a Groundhog Day scenario where days blend into each other, Sean commented, “For the time being, I still have a clean, well-lit home and so many don’t. So my medicine is just how lucky I am. My children are healthy, knock wood. My mother lives two blocks away. She’s 92 years old and she’s healthy, knock on wood.”

“Tomorrow’s another day. But it’s a Groundhog Day. It gets on all of us in one way or another.” – Rappler.com

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Ruben V. Nepales

Based in Los Angeles, Ruben V. Nepales is an award-winning journalist whose honors include prizes from the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards, a US-wide competition, and the Southern California Journalism Awards, presented by the Los Angeles Press Club.