Sean Penn

Sean Justin Penn, born August 17, 1960, in Santa Monica, California, is an American actor, filmmaker, and activist whose career spans stage, film, and television. The son of actor and director Leo Penn and actress Eileen Ryan, Penn grew up in Malibu, California, attending Malibu Park Junior High School and Santa Monica High School. His father was Jewish, descended from emigrants from Merkinė, Lithuania, while his mother was of Irish and Italian Catholic heritage. His older brother is musician Michael Penn, and his younger brother, actor Chris Penn, died in 2006. Among Penn's childhood friends were actors Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen, with whom he made short films near their shared neighborhood.

Penn's earliest screen appearance came as an extra in a 1974 episode of Little House on the Prairie, during episodes directed by his father. He launched his professional stage career in New York, appearing on Broadway between 1981 and 1983. His Broadway debut came in Kevin Heelan's play Heartland at the Century Theatre in 1981. Two years later, he returned to Broadway in John Byrne's Slab Boys at the Playhouse Theatre, performing alongside Kevin Bacon, Val Kilmer, Jackie Earle Haley, and Madeleine Potter.

Concurrent with his Broadway work, Penn began building a film career. He made his feature debut in the action-drama Taps (1981), playing a military high school cadet. The following year he appeared in the comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) as surfer-stoner Jeff Spicoli, a role credited with helping popularize the word "dude" in popular culture. In 1983 he played Mick O'Brien, a troubled youth, in the drama Bad Boys, a performance that earned favorable reviews and established him as a serious actor. Subsequent film roles in the 1980s included At Close Range (1986), Casualties of War (1989), and the neo-noir State of Grace (1990), in which he portrayed Detective Terry Noonan opposite Ed Harris and Gary Oldman.

Penn made his directorial debut with the crime drama The Indian Runner (1991), based on Bruce Springsteen's song "Highway Patrolman" from the 1982 album Nebraska. He went on to direct The Crossing Guard (1995), starring Jack Nicholson; The Pledge (2001); and Into the Wild (2007). During the 1990s he also directed music videos, including Shania Twain's "Dance with the One That Brought You" (1993) and Lyle Lovett's "North Dakota" (1993). As an actor during that decade, he appeared in Carlito's Way (1993) opposite Al Pacino, earning a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and starred alongside Susan Sarandon in Tim Robbins's Dead Man Walking (1995), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor for She's So Lovely (1997) and the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice International Film Festival for Hurlyburly (1998). A second Academy Award nomination for Best Actor followed for his portrayal of an egotistical jazz guitarist in Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown (1999).

Penn received a third Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for I Am Sam (2001). He then won the Academy Award for Best Actor for Mystic River (2003), in which he played a grieving father, and again for Milk (2008), portraying gay rights activist Harvey Milk. He was additionally nominated for Dead Man Walking (1995). In 2025, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing corrupt military officer Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw in One Battle After Another. His total accolades include three Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a British Academy Film Award, nominations for an Emmy Award and a Grammy Award, the Honorary César in 2015, and the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award in 2022.

Among his many other film appearances are The Thin Red Line (1998), 21 Grams (2003), Fair Game (2010), The Tree of Life (2011), Licorice Pizza (2021), and Daddio (2023). On television, Penn portrayed an astronaut in the Hulu drama series The First (2018) and played John N. Mitchell in the Starz political thriller miniseries Gaslit (2022).

Beyond his artistic work, Penn has been active in political and humanitarian causes, including criticism of the George W. Bush administration, contact with the presidents of Cuba and Venezuela, relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and public support for Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy during the Russian-Ukrainian war.