Born: August 17, 1960
Age: 50
Nationality: American
Occupation: Actor, Writer, Producer
Success: Dead Man Walking, Mystic River, Into the Wild …
Awards: Best Actor Oscar for Mystic River and Harvey Milk
Sean Penn , actor, director and producer in the image of rebellious and charismatic man, is known for his talent as a performer indomitable including Mystic River , The Thin Red Line or Dead Man Walking . Man of many talents, Sean Penn is also very politically active and well known for the news.
From an early age, Sean is to make films having a father director (Leo Penn) and an actress mother (Eileen Ryan). Her late brother (Leo Penn, who died in 2006), too, became an actor. Determined, Sean Penn joined the Group Repertory Theater quickly that form to play on the boards of the theater, and began as an actor. But soon he became interested in cinema.
An actor roles and rebel complex
In 1981 his career took off in Hollywood with the film Taps directed by Harold Becker. Strong character actor, he is credited with a long history of roles of men and rebels revolted but profound. His talent allows him to play complex characters and imposing; Sean Penn will be led by the greatest: Dennis Hopper in Colors , in David Fincher’s The Game , Terrence Malick in The Thin Red Line , Brian de Palma in Outrages , Tim Robbins in The last step , or Clint Eastwood in Mystic River , to the role of a grieving father in search of the murderer of his daughter, which earned him an Oscar in 2004.
His acting career enriched and diverse allows him to play in both Hollywood productions and independent productions , with 21 Grams , Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, the film in which he plays a sick man awaiting a heart transplant. In 2009 he won an Oscar for his new character as a politician gay activist for the homosexual cause in Harvey Milk , an independent feature film by Gus Van Sant. Political positions and involvement of the actor, he will even play a diplomat of the White House in Fair Game in 2010.
Director charismatic and deep
Alongside his acting career indomitable Sean Penn seeks to be fully expressed in his works he wrote and produced. In 1991 released his first film centered on guilt , The Indian Runner, history two brothers with contrasting fates: while a soldier in Vietnam and is looking for a meaning to life, the other is a police officer to traditional values. It is on the Bruce Springsteen song “Highway Patrolman” the director has scripted this family drama, directly inspired by an Indian legend about the tests to pass vital for young men.
In 1995 he directed Jack Nicholson interpreting a father devastated by the death of his daughter, in Crossing Guard. This film is essentially based on revenge and forgiveness . The parents of Sean Penn to even make an appearance. After these two original films, Sean Penn in 2001 decided to adapt “The Promise” a novel by Friedrich Dürrenmatt and finds Jack Nicholson for the lead and Robin Wright Penn, his wife of five years.Thrillers black moving, this long film is mainly based on insanity.
After the attacks of September 11 attacks in New York and Washington in 2001, 11 authors from around the world decide to make a short film of 11 minutes to pay tribute to the victims. Sean Penn, who represents the United States decides to portrays a widower (Ernest Borgnine) who becomes aware of the death of his wife with the light appearing on the day the twin towers collapsed.
In the 2000s, Sean Penn focuses on the true story of Christopher McCandless aka Alexander Supertramp, a young student who left everything to go in pursuit of happiness and died in Alaska in 90 years. After claiming the copyright for ten years with the family of the deceased, he managed to adapt the road-movie in 2007 based on the book “Journey to the End of loneliness,” the journalist Jon Krakauer wrote in 1996. For the role of Christopher McCandless Emile Hirsch Sean Penn reveals that mentally and physically prepare for eight months in the larger American landscape before the shooting.
Personality protest and committed
Man of many hats , Sean Penn is not only an actor and a director rebel: he is also a committed man who hit the headlines . First, by marrying Madonna in 1985 with whom he will suffer domestic violence until her divorce in 1989 but also for his sentence to one month in prison for assaulting a photographer.
Its protest against the intervention of U.S. troops in Iraq with its commitment to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Bad Boy will be long criticized by the Americans, regarded as one of “bizarre”. Placing themselves on the margins of society, Sean Penn will continue to invest for all humanitarian causes . He has defended Proposition 8 on gay marriage and went to help victims of earthquake in Haiti in 2010. Finally, following the events, he founded an NGO (J / P HRO: Penn-Jenkins Human Relief Organization) to rebuild homes and schools, and care for the sick.
He is also on view of The Tree of Life , directed by Terrence Malick, Palme d’Or at Cannes. It embodies a rockstar fallen into a road movie to be released August 24, titled This Must Be The Place directed by Paolo Sorrentino.Finally, it is currently preparing its 4 th feature film, an adaptation of the novel “The lost steps” written by Alejo Carpentier.
Feature films Sean Penn :
- 1991: The Indian Runner
- 1995: Crossing Guard
- 2001: The pledge
- 2007: Into the Wild