ike his hero Charles Bukou ski. Sean Penn
w as born into ‘this'. The grandchild of
migratory Lithuanian Jews and Irish Catholics. the ‘this‘ was a near suicidal urge to disprove accepted beliefs. A btmdle of contradictions. Penn's bruiser paparazzi- punching profile of 20 years ago has given way to something more subtle. If he registers at all in our celebrity-obsessed psyches. the once and long ago Mr Madonna has now become a vague byword for ()scar-ysinning actor reclusivcness and anti-Bush sentiment. Penn the dissenter is a godsend to conservative l'S press: the diseased and diseasing Fox News (‘hannel host Bill ()‘Reilly still likes occasionally to refer to Saddam Hussein as ‘Sean Penn's buddy". There was also his well publicised run-in with Trey Parker and Matt Stone. the South Park duo who took the scattergun to Penn in their tongue-in- cheek 'l'htau/erhinlv spoof Team .-lmeriea: llin'lt/ Police and depicted him as one of a group of self-righteous liberal actors who venture on a peace keeping trip to North Korea.
Penn. a self—confessed patriot who considers his government to be a bunch of ‘neo-fascists'. did not take their juvenile ribbing lying down. He published a brief open letter to Stone (who had enraged Penn further by advocating not voting in the then upcoming election) on a website in which he strongly criticised the pair. signing off with a curt ‘fuck you'. Penn added this afterthought: ‘PS take this as a personal invitation from me to you . . . to escort you on the trip I took at Christmas. We‘ll fly to Amman. Jordan and I‘ll ride with you for 12 hours through the Sunni Triangle into Fallujah and Baghdad and I‘ll show you around. When we return. make all the fun you want.‘ To retum to Bukowski for a moment: whether you love or hate Penn’s artistic or idealistic place in the Hollywood ftrmament at this moment in time. he is living out the Bukowski mantra (frotn his remarkable poem ‘The Laughing Heart') that: ‘Your life is your life. Don't let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. There are ways out.‘
As Alex Ferguson will tell you. the early 1980s were a long time ago. While Ferguson was shaping Aberdeen into a personal calling card. Penn was partying his way around a series of low budget film roles. The Califomia-bom sort of TV director Leo Penn (Hawaii 5-(). Cagney and Lacey and The Binnie Woman all feature heavily on his CV) and actress Eileen Ryan (The Twilight Zone. Bonanza) he had found it pretty easy to
O 0 jump into bit parts in television. His talent carried him onto strong supporting roles in Harold Becker's reactionary military academy Wistern
TAPS. Amy Heckerling‘s fondly remembered high ' ' school comedy Fast Times at Ridgemanr High and AS two new films Starrlng are released, Rick Rosenthal‘s near forgotten and underrated
PaUI Dale saVOUTS the contradictions and surprising street kid drama Bad Boys. In between. Penn went
on benders in New York and LA with fellow
SUbtletieS at the biaCk Of aCtOF’S Career. actors Han‘y Dean Stanton and Mickey Rourke. At
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