Of all the younger talents of his generation, Sean Penn is arguably "brat-pack" brilliant. He first received attention playing misunderstood teenagers but has graduated to better roles and shown talent as a film director. He has become increasingly selective about the roles he agrees to play and seems more intent on directing films than being in them, though possibly no one could replicate what Sean Penn brought to his role in Dead Man Walking (1995), which earned him both ACADEMY AWARD and Golden Globe nominations.
Sean Penn was born in Burbank, California, on August 17, 1960, the son of director Leo Penn and actress Eileen Ryan. Penn spent his youth in California, and from the time he was 10, he and his family lived in Malibu, where his surfing friends included Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen, and Rob Lowe. After graduating from high school, Penn spent two years with the Los Angeles Group Repertory Theatre, studied with acting coach Peggy Feury, and first appeared on television in an episode of Barnaby Jones.
Penn then went to New York and was given a part in the Broadway play Heartland. After receiving positive reviews for his performance, he was cast with Timothy Hutton and TOM CRUISE in Taps (1981), his first feature film, which was set in a corrupt military school. His next film was Amy Heckerling's Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), in which he played a stereotypical surfer. The next year, he had a defining role in Bad Boys (1983), playing a teenage killer in a reform school.
Costarring with NICOLAS CAGE in Racing with the Moon (1984), he gave evidence of now mature acting. That same year, he was in a Louis Malle comedy, Crackers (1984), which did nothing for his career, but in 1985, he worked with Timothy Hutton in The Falcon and the Snowman, directed by John Schlesinger, an espionage thriller about stolen government secrets. Shanghai Surprise (1986) was not an artistic advance for Penn, but he took the role to be with his then wife and costar, MADONNA. His marriage to Madonna lasted until early 1989.
Penn's next major film was Colors (1988), about escalating gang warfare in Los Angeles, so potentially incendiary that some Los Angeles theaters refused to screen it after a local teenager was shot to death while standing on line to see the film. Penn agreed to be in the film only if DENNIS HOPPER directed it. In 1989, Casualties of War, directed by BRIAN DE PALMA, gave Penn a chance to make a point about military corruption in the Vietnam War: The story, based upon an actual incident, involved the attempted cover-up of the rape and murder of a Vietnamese woman.
Continuing in this mode, Penn played an undercover cop infiltrating an Irish- American gang in New York's Hell's Kitchen in State of Grace (1990). In contrast to such gritty realism, Penn also teamed with ROBERT DE NIRO to make We're No Angels (1989), where they played convicts with hearts of gold who want to escape from prison. Penn's character enters a monastery after escaping from prison.
A major career shift occurred in 1991, when Penn wrote and directed The Indian Runner, concerning two brothers, one a troubled Vietnam War veteran and the other a policeman. His next directorial effort was The Crossing Guard (1994), which he also wrote and which starred JACK NICHOLSON and Anjelica Huston, who was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Supporting Actress for her performance.
Penn would join with Jack Nicholson again to make The Pledge in 2001, a very ambitious project adapted from a story by the German-Swiss novelist Friedrich Dürrenmatt entitled Das Versprechen (1958), ingeniously transplanted to the American West. It is a finely crafted police procedural about a detective who wants to retire but feels compelled to track down a serial killer of children.
As a favor to Brian De Palma, Penn returned to acting in 1993 for Carlito's Way, an AL PACINO vehicle. Playing a sleazy lawyer, Penn received the Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor. In 1995, he appeared in actor-director TIM ROBBINS's film Dead Man Walking as a death-row inmate. Perhaps acting in OLIVER STONE's U-Turn (1997) was not such a good idea, but Penn redeemed himself in She's So Lovely (1997), directed by NICK CASSAVETES, playing another convict who is trying to win back his ex-wife after his release from prison. Penn won Best Actor accolades at the Cannes Film Festival for this performance.
In 1998, Penn agreed to work with Terrence Malick in The Thin Red Line, adapted from the novel by James Jones, in a large ensemble cast. In the adaptation of David Rabe's play Hurlyburly (1998) Penn played Eddie, a cocaineaddicted casting agent. This role earned Penn a nomination for the Independent Sprit Award. Penn turned in a careerdefining performance in CLINT EASTWOOD's Mystic River (2003), earning Penn comparison with MARLON BRANDO "as a great tormented screen actor," as David Denby wrote for The New Yorker.
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