Penn drove across country and very quickly was starring on Broadway in "Heartland" (1981), where he turned heads as the timid teenage son of an abusive father. Before he was 20 years old, he had produced his first play, the one-act "Terrible Jim Fitch" by "Midnight Cowboy" author Leo Herlihy, and decided that if was going to be serious about his career, he needed to spend some time working in New York. Out of necessity, he also wound up in front of the camera.Īfter graduating from Santa Monica High School, Penn began learning the technical aspects of stage production with an apprenticeship at the Group Repertory Theater, as well as studying acting with famed drama instructor, Peggy Feury. When he was not surfing the beaches of Malibu, he was shooting films with a Super 8 camera. But from a young age, Penn was fascinated by filmmaking. Eldest brother Michael - who went on to make a name for himself as a songwriter and musician - had all the musical talent, and youngest brother Chris was the spirited extrovert, while the middle Penn was serious and shy an unlikely acting candidate. The pair married and moved back to Los Angeles, where Penn had a successful career as a television director and Ryan raised the couple's three sons, Michael, Sean and Chris, before returning to acting later in her life. While performing in a production of "The Iceman Cometh" on Broadway, he met actress Ryan. to New York during the 1950s after he was blacklisted from Hollywood for refusing to testify in anti-Communist hearings. His father was a drama teacher at the Actor's Studio who had fled from L.A. 17, 1960 to actors Eileen Ryan and Leo Penn. Despite such opinions, no one could deny that Penn's work was consistently of the highest caliber, making him a modern-day Marlon Brando. Still, Penn continued to deliver onscreen with "Milk" (2008), though his refusal to play the Hollywood game earned him an unshakable reputation as hostile and arrogant.
Meanwhile, he traded his bad-boy persona for political outspokenness, which included calling for the impeachment of President Bush while rankling conservatives for hobnobbing with reviled world leaders. After "Sweet and Lowdown" (1999) and "I Am Sam" (2001), Penn won the Oscar for his portrayal of a streetwise father out to avenge his daughter's murder in "Mystic River" (2003).
He entered a long and slightly less turbulent marriage to Robin Wright, while earning acclaim as a smarmy lawyer in "Carlito's Way" (1993) and a death row inmate in "Dead Man Walking" (1995). Penn originally broke through with his iconic turn as stoned surfer Jeff Spicoli in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" (1982), but he established himself as a serious actor with "Bad Boys" (1983), only to be hounded by paparazzi due to his high-profile, short-lived marriage to Madonna, which resulted in the box-office dud "Shanghai Surprise" (1985) and violent run-ins with photographers. Hailed as one of the finest actors of his generation, Sean Penn earned multiple Oscar nominations for his onscreen intensity and proved a powerful filmmaking talent at the helm of his own character-driven dramas like "The Crossing Guard" (1995) and "The Pledge" (2001) - all the while remaining the ultimate Hollywood outsider.
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