Sean Penn’s 70 Greatest Quotes
Sean Penn (born 1960) is a Californian actor born in Santa Monica.
In his outstanding career as a performer, Sean Penn has managed to win two Oscars for his appearance in two unforgettable films: Mystic River (2003) and Milk (2009). He has also participated in films directed by Brian de Palma and other great directors of the time.
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Phrases of Sean Penn, a unique actor
In today’s article we will get to know better the personality and thoughts of this magnificent performer through the best phrases of Sean Penn .
1. I like to believe that love is a reciprocal thing, that you can’t really feel it.
His ethical proposal on this feeling.
2. Only in innocence do you find any kind of magic, any kind of courage.
That’s why he understands children’s minds so well.
3. If you cannot count on your heart to have some kind of unified response, you cannot count on anything. You use your heart as a barometer to complete the movie.
A unique and personal way of rounding off a beautiful story.
4. To sum up, I will say that it was an approach to the family and to the author Jon Krakauer, which led me to look like the top of the pile of several filmmakers who were trying to get the rights. And I mean the top of the pile in terms of being someone who was trusted to do it, because they said they were going to try and do it and that this way of doing it would be something they would be willing to allow.
About an episode in his professional life.
5. The bottom line is you love your wife, you do your best with it.
About love and marriage.
6. That on a romantic level, if you feel for someone and it’s pure, it means they do too.
About the feeling of love.
7. There is no shame in saying that we all want to be loved.
That’s right, as much as he looks like a tough guy.
8. I think it is a good time for those who voted for the ban on gay marriage to sit down and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes if they continue with that form of support. We must have equal rights for all.
Your ideological position on gay marriage.
9. Well, I’m pretty anti-legendary, I just don’t think they’re useful. Then that certainly wouldn’t be my intention. But will it contribute to that? Of course it will. Any drug can be misused. But I think there’s a great deal of courage, innocence and magic to it, that more than a legend is about connection.
A reflection by Sean Penn that allows us to think long and hard.
10. Mediocrity is greatly celebrated and many wonderful things are ignored or discouraged.
The public’s favor is usually quite unfair.
11. A child has a fever in the United States and it is high enough and sustainable enough that all of us can take a child to an emergency room. Most Haitians have never had that opportunity. They didn’t have the emergency room to take them. Virtually every time your child has a fever, you wait until he or she dies and you don’t have any clean water to give your child.
On the differences between the first world and the Caribbean country, one of the poorest on the planet.
12. So, if we have something original to offer, it is to talk about our own lives about the society in which we find ourselves.
Each biography is unique and has great added value.
13. I think we all have light and dark inside us.
We are capable of the best and the worst.
14. I will not recommend recklessness, but somewhere, proving oneself and proactively seeking a rite of passage has become necessary because in the developed Western countries we have become so addicted to convenience.
A sentence about how to get out of the comfort zone.
15. The sense of self, and the way one shares it, is perhaps the most valuable and poetic gift in one’s arsenal of life and art.
Self-awareness, in other words.
16. If there’s one thing unpleasant in the movie business, it’s the fornication of my partners.
Backstage promiscuity has always been discussed.
17. I’m not going to have a better day, a more magical moment than the first time I heard my daughter laugh.
Sean Penn remembers this moment with great nostalgia.
18. Regardless of what one considers art, there is a desire in many people to express themselves creatively and to feel authentic in doing so.
Maybe that’s what the artistic fact is based on.
19. I think life is an irrational obsession.
No one in their right mind would want to stay here too long.
20. I’m not good at talking to strangers, whether they are sick children or not, I’m just not good at it. I’m shy about it.
About his introverted personality.
21. I have lost the taste for acting
In 2018, he talked like this about getting fed up with the world of cinema.
22. The first instinct is love.
The instinct that invites us to reproduce.
23. There is the old idea that where there are choices, there is chaos, and where there is no choice, there is clarity. If you have no other choice, you must be there, and you must have your heart in it. It leads to a much less self-aware life.
Great reflection on the possibilities in life.
24. Putting something in a movie because it’s in the news is not political for me. A good movie is a political thing.
If you don’t have a message, an idea, it’s not worth it.
25. I would do anything to get a performance, without malice.
A role is a role.
26. I just want real creative freedom without worrying about, you know, car payments.
Whatever I can afford to live on and pay bills.
27. I think you start preparing the moment you read something.
Talk about reading scripts.
28. I really love making movies.
His devotion to cinema was extraordinary.
29. Well, the kind of central question: “Do you want to live, and I don’t mean stay alive? Do you want to feel your life while you’re living it?” You know, there’s a place to go that was here before us and will be here after us, so get out there. It doesn’t take someone who has a self-important sense of their own attachment to nature to recognize that you’re just stupid if you don’t go out there.
The importance of living to the fullest.
30. Parenting is my main interest now. I’m a hands-on parent.
A quote from Sean Penn about his priority in life: the education of his children.
31. As a foreign worker in Haiti, speaking for myself, speaking on behalf of the workers, our organization is 95 per cent Haitian, but even the foreign workers who drive have had minimal security problems.
About the Caribbean country.
32. I don’t want to lie, play games, hurt someone or myself. You can only go one way.
Honesty has only one path.
33. I don’t read newspapers too much, just because they tend to make me feel I have a political obligation which I think is a distraction from what my political offers will be if I just make my films.
A reflection on their political position and the mediatization of the news.
34. I don’t see myself as a different man than I was ten years ago. I have no aspirations to be. It’s about where you’re putting your energies. That’s changing a lot.
Sean Penn looks back and reflects on how his identity has remained more or less intact over time.
35. I’m a little afraid of words like maturity.
An opinion about the concept of maturity, linked to that of responsibility and loss of freedom.
36. In a movie, it’s always best to remain invisible as much as possible to keep your cool. I like to whisper to my cameraman, I like to whisper to my actors and anyone else I’ve whispered to.
About maintaining a subtle quality when working as an actor.
37. I do not see life as an opportunity to see how far you can go in the search for pain, although I think I have challenged it a little.
The rejection of a tragic interpretation of life.
38. Reputations are maintained by the outside world, and are also created by it, in general. And they serve as a hell of a privacy device, because the more people look for something that isn’t there, the less likely they are to know who you are. It’s like going out with a mask on, without having to exercise your upper body to put it on.
A reflection on privacy.
39. You always have to live longer to nourish something new. It’s a must for you and for the audience. The personal baggage that comes with being a well-known actor adds to that struggle.
Experience brings psychological richness.
40. I believe that this is a great world full of men, women and children who struggle to eat, love, work, protect their families, their beliefs and their dreams.
A positive perception of the world’s families.
41. Try to do your best for what you’re paid to do.
Focusing on what motivates us is the best way to progress.
42. The two films I made, wrote and directed, have a special place for you.
A personal appreciation of the actor’s professional experience.
43. All I need is a few tasty waves, a fresh rumor, and I’m good.
An ideal landscape to relax.
44. I have no particular emotion about working with a specific director or actor at this time.
There is not always an emotional burden associated with working with someone.
45. I believe that if you want good things to happen for a country like Haiti, then you must provide the circumstances in which Haitians can do so.
Beyond will are the material possibilities of carrying out useful measures.
46. There is a kind of sense of truth and reconciliation that is not formalized, but is understood and accepted. Haitians are Haitians and there is an inherent loyalty that is very forgiving.
About that which is not in question.
47. I think I haven’t succeeded yet in playing the role of the retired actor, and I’d like to work on that.
Another of this actor’s curiosities.
48. I’m a big Woody Allen fan. Good movie, bad movie, doesn’t matter, I just like his movies.
A type of film that has its own scale of quality.
49. The only thing you can count on in Hollywood, in general, is cowardice.
The vocation to be commercial leads to a lack of honesty and commitment, according to this artist.
50. Everything I was able to do with those experiences certainly contributes to everything I can do as a director. The corruption in that is that most of what I acted in the last 10 years was stealing film school time from these kids. Those were the people I thought I could learn from as a director.
Learning works in two ways.
51. The advice you give to young directors is to go out and become a version of a successful film actor. Do that first and say yes to people like Terrence Malick, Clint Eastwood and Woody Allen when they come to offer you movies. It’s a great front row seat to filmmaking.
About the beginnings in the industry.
52. I don’t think there are any climate skeptics. I think that there are people who give themselves over to a culture of what can be reduced to Fox network thinking. That has nothing to do with the policy that applies to the protection of the quality of life in any sense. It’s like talking to a member of a cult.
It criticizes a way of thinking that depends on the big headlines.
53. When you act in a film, you’re inevitably surrounded by people you didn’t choose, even the painter. I like being able to choose the family I’m waking up to in the morning that will make this group strive to tell a story that applies to what’s interesting to me at that stage of my life.
You have no power of decision over everything that happens.
54. If you are willing to put two thoughts into one image, then you are already ahead of the game.
About the creative process of storytelling.
55. At this stage, what would be rewarding would be if the audiences wanted to watch.
Opinion about the motivations of the general public.
56. I’m sorry my interview with El Chapo didn’t spark the debate on the war on drugs.
One of Sean Penn’s phrases referring to his views on the impact of his work.
57. It’s a close-up of my feelings. That place moves me. And I don’t mean my country; it’s part of our shared natural world that happens to be particular to the feeling of where my inclinations to tell stories and my own history of being a kind of rat and traveling come from.
About a common homeland.
58. I have never been one of those who feel what they call stage fright.
A curiosity about the Sean Penn way.
59. I can live better as an actor than as a director. Although I would certainly prefer to direct films.
Two professions that provide different incentives.
60. I love acting, actually my favorite people are actors.
About the relationship between the pleasure and the work of this actor.
61. I’ll tell you what I’d probably prefer to see happen less and less: actors I know and respect in shampoo ads. Or modeling.
Personal opinion about the public image of professional colleagues.
62. Fulfilling what you start is the reason you start something.
A way of seeing what motivates us.
63. I can always see the light in any situation. It’s just the way I’m made.
Sean Penn talks about his propensity for optimism.
64. In any movie I’m in, I speak my mind.
Declaration of intent based on honesty.
65. What is very close in the process is writing and acting, not directing. Directing is very different.
A way to classify different creative works in the world of cinema.
66. I don’t think you can get away with putting your talents in the toilet bowl and not letting them go.
Using your own artistic skills to create mediocre products takes its toll.
67. Not many good movies are being made.
An opinion on the state of cinema today.
68. Marriage isn’t easy, but it’s great most of the time.
About life together between two lovers.
69. Sacrificing American soldiers or innocent civilians in an unprecedented pre-emptive strike against a separate sovereign nation may well prove to be a more temporary medicine.
Anti-war and anti-unnecessary killing approaches.
70. I lost a friend I was lucky enough to have. My thoughts are with the family of President Chavez and the people of Venezuela.
One of the signs of the extent to which Sean Penn has not kept out of politics in his statements.