Sean Penn Biography

On acting:

“I can never get ahead of the game because of the movies I do.”

“You build a cage based on your sense of the truth and your sense of the aspects of the character that need to tell the story. If you've done your job right, which I've had varying degrees of success doing at different times in my life, then you're able to function very freely within that cage.”

"It was the hardest thing I've ever done. My wife thinks it's the best. I don't call it my best, because either I've done something well or I haven't. I think I did this one well. I'd go back and fix some things in everything I've done. Usually, if I've done something really well, I'd only re-shoot half the film." Penn speaking on his role in Assassination of Richard Nixon

On the industry:

“The major studios are by and large banks and they give you what is by and large a loan to make a movie. Like banks, they want their money back plus.”

On himself/life:

“I think it's really important to be able to feel your own life, and I had felt so numbed by what had been a kind of surreal saturation of what was going on in the Middle East and what it was going to mean, particularly relative to my kids' future and things like that.”

“Your life is what you bring to any story. This is a life craft. It's "How do you feel? Who are you? What do you have to say?"

“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.”

“The bigger issue is that it's an absolutely stupid notion that you should take the title of someone's profession and attach it to what they should not do. It has nothing to do with citizenry.”

Others:

"I don't like any directors. I don't get along with any of them. Mostly I think they're a bunch of whiny people without any point of view. So I don't want to be around them at six o'clock in the morning with make-up and bells on. And I'm probably the same way for the actors on my set - but that's their problem."