You’re always having to live more to fuel something new. It’s an obligation to yourself and to the audience. The personal baggage that comes with being a known actor just adds to that struggle. – Sean Penn
I’m a huge Woody Allen fan. Good movie, bad movie, it doesn’t matter – I just like his movies. – Sean Penn
I love stories about people who are smart enough to know that what they’re doing is destroying them, but that knowing that doesn’t help them. – Sean Penn
Craft comes into acting later rather than sooner. I was somebody who had to learn through a process – a natural actor doesn’t need to. – Sean Penn
When you act in a film, you’re inevitably surrounded by people you didn’t choose, right down to the set painter. I like being able to pick the family I’m waking up to in the morning that’s going to make this group effort to tell a story that applies to what’s interesting to me at that stage in my life. – Sean Penn
That on a romantic level, if you feel it about somebody and it’s pure, it means that they do too. – Sean Penn
I don’t have any particular excitement about working with any specific director or actor at this point. – Sean Penn
The thing that’s very close in the process is writing and acting, not directing. Directing’s very different. – Sean Penn
Selling a movie feels like a hustle to every bone in my body. Many actors have careers dominated by modeling. They’re all over the place. It turns me off. People who are good at what they do ought to practice something bigger. – Sean Penn
I had a house burn down once, and everything in life burned, except my family, and it was so liberating. I didn’t have a bad moment about it. It sort of reinvigorated my interest in a lot of things. – Sean Penn
Yeah, I had a tremendous time shooting in Nebraska. I like that state a lot, all over it. – Sean Penn
Sacrificing American soldiers or innocent civilians in an unprecedented preemptive attack on a separate sovereign nation may well prove itself a most temporary medicine. – Sean Penn
Love is a mess, at best, and I figure it can be very real in spite of all the things people try to attach to it. – Sean Penn
There is no shame in my saying that we all want to be loved by someone. As I look back over my life in romance, I don’t feel I’ve ever had that. – Sean Penn
Turning one’s back on stardom might be the highest form of common sense. One that I would aspire to be more complete with. – Sean Penn
I live in the energy and rhythm of the character. To some degree, that’s true of every actor I’ve worked with. – Sean Penn
What happens is things come to you – director, script – and if you respond to it, it’s because it’s tapping into some part of what’s inside you, and different roles tap into different parts. – Sean Penn
So if we have anything original to offer, it’s to speak from our own life about the society we’re in. – Sean Penn
