About Sean Penn: Sean Justin Penn is an American actor, film director and political activist. He has won two Academy Awards, for his roles in the mystery drama Mystic River (2003) and the biopic Milk (2008).
I cannot tell you that I ever fell in love with the theater as an audience. I fell in love with the theater as an actor for a period of time, but I have struggled as an audience, and I struggle more now than then. I was always a movie guy.
In my teens, I fell in love with the movies.
In between, I go broke because I seem to do movies where you're not paid a lot as an actor.
There are a few directors around who I have some excitement about spending my $7 at the theatre watching their movies.
Well, look at all of these summer blockbusters. You can't help but laugh a little, because you've already seen a lot of these movies 482 times.
I choose movies that I think will speak to what's important.
I can make a better living as an actor than I can as a director. Though I certainly would prefer to be directing movies.
Hal Holbrook was in one of my first television movies when I was about 18 or 19. He'd made such a strong impression on me and a lasting one in terms of what being an actor was.
Well, I think that when you direct a movie or write it. And in the case of the two movies I did, I wrote and directed, they occupy a special place for you.
I've always operated under the notion that audiences don't always know when they're being lied to, but that they always know when they're being told the truth.
I don't consider myself specifically political, you know? I think of working as an actor as being a human thing. The concerns I have that fall into politics are human concerns.
I think that I've still not been successful at playing the role of the retired actor, and I'd like to work on that.
