On a mildly chilly afternoon in the red city of Marrakech, famed for its gorgeous sunsets over the Atlas mountains, burly men stood guard outside a hall in Hotel Es Saadi where a press conference was to be addressed by Sean Penn.
The Hollywood star was invited to Morocco by the Marrakech International Film Festival, which honored him for his life’s work as an actor, director, producer and humanitarian.
Inside the hall, chairs faced a two-seater rectangular table on which two name cards had been placed. Young Moroccan female reporters rushed up to Penn’s name card, posed next to it, pouted, made the “V sign,” and clicked photographs.
The V sign, which used to stand for victory once, now expresses millennials’ wish for world peace, an appropriate desire around Penn.
The two-time Oscar-winning actor, director and activist-provocateur Penn is in the news as much for the roles he immerses himself in as he is for the many international causes and humanitarian work he takes up.
In 2022, he was in Kyiv to make a documentary on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy during the Russian invasion. Before he left, he handed over one of his two Oscar statuettes to Zelenskiy, saying, “It’s just a symbolic silly thing, but if I know this is here with you, then I’ll feel better and stronger for the fight. When you win, bring it back to Malibu.”
In Marrakech, minutes before he arrived at the press conference, a lady in his entourage rushed up to the rectangular table and placed a maroon ashtray. And when Penn finally arrived to a flurry of clicking cameras followed by spontaneous applause, he sat down, lit a cigarette and blew out some smoke before answering questions about American politics, Hollywood, the Oscars, the life of an actor and activist, and being honored by the festival.
“It’s mortifying,” Penn said about being celebrated in the presence of cinema heavyweights like Luca Guadagnino ( Call Me By Your Name), Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Roma), Monica Bellucci, Tim Burton and Jeff Nichols. But added that the tribute ceremony was “as painless as it could have been.”
A short film screened at the ceremony celebrated Penn’s career, which includes acting credits in Mystic River, I Am Sam, 21 Grams, and Dead Man Walking, as well as 15 films as a director, including his Ukraine documentary, Superpower, and Into The Wild.
In his most recent film, Daddio, written and directed by Christy Hall, Penn plays a New York cabbie, Clark. A very particular kind of macho man, his character offers dating advice and life lessons to a young female passenger (played by Dakota Johnson) trying to make sense of her relationship with a famous married man.
Penn, who has been married to Madonna, Robin Wright, Australian actress Leila George, and has been linked with Charlize Theron, Scarlett Johansson and actress Olga Korotyayeva in the past, is currently dating Valeria Nicov, 30, a model. The couple staying at Marrakech’s famous La Mamounia hotel made their relationship public at the film festival held early in December.
‘There are two types of birds: Falcons and the birds that falcons eat’
“Those who breed falcons will tell you that there are two types of birds: Falcons, and the birds that falcons eat,” Penn, who is just 5’6”, his veins popping out of his muscled and tattooed arms, said in response to a question about what sort of actor he is at a masterclass that followed the press conference.
“To me, to be an actor is to be a falcon.”
Penn, who won his first Oscar for playing a racist murderer on death row in the 1996 film Dead Man Walking and his second one for the role of California gay rights activist Harvey Milk in Gus Van Sant’s 2008 film Milk, wears his heart on his sleeve in life, and on screen.
In films, he has played several morally dubious characters with empathy and fragility that makes them human. In life, he has taken up cudgels on behalf of several nations and causes, from backing Argentina’s claim to the Falkland Islands, the long-contested archipelago, against the British and setting up one of America’s most impressive coronavirus testing programs during Covid.
But when it comes to institutions and leaders he deems spineless or compromised, Penn doesn’t hold back his disapproval or disdain.
At the press conference and later at a masterclass, Penn slammed the Academy for “limiting different cultural expressions” and called out Hollywood’s cowardice.
Speaking of how Iranian director Ali Abbasi’s recent film, The Apprentice, had trouble finding an American distributor in the lead-up to the U.S. elections, Penn said, “It’s kind of jaw-dropping how afraid this ‘business of mavericks’ is when they get a great film like that with great, great acting. They, too, can be as afraid as a piddly little Republican congressman.”
In the film that stars Sebastian Stan as a young Donald Trump, the President-elect is shown as a cowardly, cynical, slightly dim man driven only by his passion to succeed. He toadies up to Roy Cohn, a well-connected and corrupt lawyer, and uses him to build his business empire, but then drops him after he’s served his purpose.
During the last Trump presidency, Penn talked about being depressed and how he would spend his nights watching the news and be “just despairing.” It drove him towards “alcohol and Ambien” and away from his then-wife, Leila George.
The world, he believes, is still incredible, and the best piece of advice he has taken to heart and doles out freely, he says, is the one he found on those military-type patches. It said, “Suck less.”
Citizen Penn and his aching, bleeding heart
Deep lines now mark Sean Penn’s forehead; his hair is wispy and grey. There’s a worrying quiver in his voice and his hands as well. But he hasn’t mellowed, though he does get emotional often.
In 2005, Penn helped with relief efforts in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. In 2010, he worked tirelessly with his nonprofit, CORE, in earthquake-hit Haiti and saved many lives. This led to a documentary titled Citizen Penn.
In 2013, Sean Penn engineered the escape of an American businessman incarcerated in a Bolivian prison.
But sometimes his lefty, pinko, bleeding heart and his affinity for dictators have led to jokes, memes and questions about his intentions and gender politics.
Like in 2016, when he secretly interviewed drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, let out a silent fart during their interaction and wrote about all of it in Rolling Stone.
Soon after, when he slammed the #MeToo movement as being “salacious” and declared that its spirit is to “divide men and women.”
He welled up in Marrakech while talking about Poland, to which he, along with thousands of refugees from Ukraine, fled and found safe shelter. “The Polish people opened their hearts and souls,” he said, his voice choking with emotions.
For all of Penn’s acting accolades, the serious causes he takes up, and his aching-bleeding heart, he doesn’t bore, nor does he reek of piety. That’s because he retains a bit of the teenager rebel in him, a James Dean who still wants to ride the coolest bike and have the coolest girl, is often politically incorrect, but also desperately wants world peace.
Penn chain-smoked while rubbishing political correctness at the press conference and masterclass.
Urging everyone to embrace “passionate uncertainty” instead of alienating certainty, he said, “Around the world, there is this demand for diversity, but not diversity of behavior and not diversity of opinion or language. I would encourage everybody to be as politically incorrect as their heart desires.”
He even made light of the importance of films and the messages we may think they deliver.
While discussing Dead Man Walking, in which he played the role of Matthew Poncelet, who is sentenced to death for the murder and rape of a teenage couple, Penn said that in the U.S., who gets the death penalty “depends largely on the color of your skin and the size of your wallet.”
But then, toggling back to the film’s powerful story that involved the death row convict finding a spiritual guide in Sister Helen (played by Susan Sarandon), Penn recalled his brother Michael’s reaction after watching the film.
“‘It changed my mind about the death penalty. I’m for it now,’ Michael told me,” Penn said, chuckling.
The other reason which makes Citizen Penn stand out is that despite his constantly bleeding heart, he can still laugh at his own earnestness.
