Playboy Interview: Sean Penn

Once, trying to get close enough to Sean Penn to take his picture--let alone talk about his private life--was typically met with epithets, spit and fists.Peoplemagazine diagnosed him as a "slugaholic" and paparazzi often goaded him into violence just to get one more action shot of Penn's knuckles heading straight at a camera lens. He snarled at reporters, threw punches at men who flirted with his then-wife Madonna, refused to do publicity for some of his films and became so immersed in a sea of bad press that it began to tarnish his obvious skills as an actor.

Approaching Penn today is significantly less hazardous. Now a wiser, more mature 31 years old, he has put aside acting in order to direct, and he has also adopted the more sedate lifestyle of a loving father. But don't suggest to Penn that his kinder, gentler incarnation means he's a changed man. "Changed from what?" he'll bark, a look of distaste covering his pugnacious face. "A generalized, categorized perception of my public persona? For those who have taken any interest?"

Despite his protests, people have been taking an interest in Penn from the very beginning of his career, and in the beginning, much of that attention was positive. From his first major role in "Taps," which co-starred Timothy Hutton and the unknown Tom Cruise, critics were enthralled. Many thought that Penn was the best actor of his generation, and some compared him to Robert De Niro. He followed "Taps" with his unforgettable performance as surfer Jeff Spicoli in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," and he continued to etch memorable roles in the movies that followed--"Bad Boys," "The Falcon and the Snowman," "Colors," "Casualties of War" and "State of Grace." But he was bedeviled by two problems. First, his acting was usually better than the films themselves, which were often box-office duds. Second, his off-screen antics--which fell into three categories: fighting, drinking and dating--turned him into a press agent's nightmare. The media began to portray him as a typical show-business tragedy: the young, talented actor who drank too much, became distracted by his marriage to a bigger star and ultimately squandered his talent.

Penn, who seldom voluntarily cooperated with the press, seemed to go out of his way to fulfill that prophecy. His enemies were seemingly everywhere: The producers of "Racing with the Moon" publicly chastised him for not promoting the movie--and for persuading his co-star and girlfriend Elizabeth McGovern to do likewise. His outdoor wedding to Madonna remains unrivaled as a media circus--and Penn didn't do his image any good when he was rumored to have opened fire with a handgun at the newscopters hovering overhead. Their divorce was as attention-getting as the wedding; a SWAT team swarmed their house at Madonna's request and rumors abounded about bizarre and abusive behavior. The press kept regular tabs on his brawls--often an easy enough task, since the press was frequently on the receiving end--and Penn was a regular in court, explaining his problems with fighting and alcohol to various judges. Sometimes the explanations worked and sometimes they didn't--Penn ultimately served 32 days in Los Angeles County Jail for violating probation.

Lately, however, Penn's life has been much quieter. He managed to fall in love with actress Robin Wright, his co-star from "State of Grace," without landing on the cover of one magazine. The couple has a baby daughter, Dylan Frances Penn, and Sean has a new career behind the camera. His directing debut, "The Indian Runner," received favorable notices when it was shown at the Cannes Film Festival and will soon be released in the U. S.

Born on August 17, 1960--also the birthday of De Niro and Davy Crockett--Penn had his first exposure to show business around the dinner table. His father, Leo Penn, was a TV and film director, and his mother was actress Eileen Ryan, who retired when Sean was born. He grew up in L.A.'s suburban San Fernando Valley but moved to Malibu when he was ten, where surfing became his passion. Show business was everywhere: Martin Sheen and his family lived down the road--Emilio Estevez and Penn became buddies in their early teens--and he went to high school with another neighbor, Rob Lowe. It's no wonder that all three Penn children ended up in show business--Sean and younger brother Christopher as actors, older brother Michael as a singer/ songwriter.

Although Sean and Christopher often fooled around with a Super-8 camera as kids, making home movies with a violence-and-action motif, Sean didn't seriously consider acting as a career until his senior year in high school. After graduation, he scrounged up some work with the Los Angeles Repertory Group Theater and studied with the late, legendary acting coach Peggy Feury. His first TV role was one line in an episode of "Barnaby Jones." More episodic TV followed, then Penn quit abruptly--typically, he complained that the commercials interrupted the flow of his work--and moved to New York to do stage work. A role in the play "Heartland" resulted in an audition for "Taps," and he was suddenly taken seriously.

When Penn agreed to a rare interview, we sent Contributing EditorDavid Rensinto meet with him as he put the finishing touches on "The Indian Runner." Rensin reports:

"I'd heard that Sean was supposedly a 'newman' and his willingness to sit for this interview seemed proof. But if he had undergone some radical personality change, it was not immediately apparent when we met at a friend's beach apartment. He greeted me coolly and carefully. There was no small talk, no attempt to create false intimacy. I quickly turned on the tape recorder and Sean sipped at a beer.

"At first, his responses were guarded and edgy. As time went on, during the first meeting and at four subsequent sessions at various locations, he opened up and displayed a sense of humor with wry, self-effacing asides. He seems comfortable with who he is, has a bracing if not entirely pleasing view of reality and is willing to roll with the changes--as long as he can do things pretty much his own way.

"I decided to begin our first session by asking about the most obvious manifestation of his new life--his daughter Dylan."

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about fatherhood.

[A] Penn:[Beaming] Isn't it a pisser?

[Q] Playboy: How has your daughter changed your life?

[A] Penn: Until my daughter was born, there was never anything more important than me in my life. She just came blasting in and said, "Hello. Now keep me alive. Make me happy. Educate me. And then let me go." All those prospects are a thrill. And you find out you don't want the night out so much.

[Q] Playboy: Are you getting much sleep?

[A] Penn: She sleeps pretty good. I'm told we're lucky. She's been nothing but a positive addition; it's not been an added burden or anything. [Long pause] Let me ask you something, because I'm curious. I'm not trying to be confrontational, but is there a preconceived sort of plan to break the ice through a personal thing like the kid?

[Q] Playboy: Where do you suggest an interviewer start with you?

[A] Penn: Well, you started with the inevitable common ground, right? [Lights the first of many cigarettes and inhales deeply]

[Q] Playboy: We'll try something else. You just got back from showing your new film, The Indian Runner, at the Cannes Film Festival. You're known for shunning the limelight, so why even go to that media circus?

[A] Penn: I hadn't ever been there with a movie. The press seemed much more respectful of the intentions behind making movies. I don't know if I was liked. I don't speak their language, but they didn't ask me stupid questions. I don't know what they wrote afterward. I was naïvely optimistic, and my expectations were exceeded.

[Q] Playboy: Did you run into your ex?

[A] Penn:[Chuckles] Yeah. She's a hoot. She's very full of life. We ran into each other at a Spike Lee Jungle Fever party. She came over and sat down with me and some of the people I was with.

[Q] Playboy: Any palpable tension?

[A] Penn: Not to me. Maybe to others. It's a curiosity, I suppose.

[Q] Playboy: Did you show her any of your baby pictures?

[A] Penn: No, there are certain things you want to talk about only with friends.

[Q] Playboy: Have you seen Truth or Dare?

[A] Penn: She asked if I'd seen it and I told her no. I'm sure I'll catch it on cable.

[Q] Playboy: Going to Cannes, a pleasant meeting with the ex. What we've heard must be true: You're a changed guy.

[A] Penn: I assume that everyone on earth is in some kind of transition, so change from what? The simplified, homogenized, mass media-ized take on me? That persona is not something single-handedly created by me. Most of it was created by people I've never met: so called journalists. So to say yes answers something that never existed.

[Q] Playboy: You mean you're just the same old Sean we've never really known?

[A] Penn: I just feel a little defensive at the suggestion of change, because I sense the condescending attitude behind it. Plus, I don't believe I'm able to articulate any changes I might have gone through. So I would be setting myself up to give the inane answer: "I'm just not this terribly violent, awful little creep anymore. I'm now an enlightened individual who loves you all." It's not true. I don't love you all. Nor did I ever hate you all.

[Q] Playboy: Does admitting to change seem like apologizing?

[A] Penn: It implies an apology, and I don't have any to make.

[Q] Playboy: Not even to people you hit?

[A] Penn: I apologize to the people who know some of those people I hit--and that I didn't hit them harder. [Smiles]

[Q] Playboy: Did you get any real satisfaction out of punching paparazzi?

[A] Penn: Sometimes I did. Generally, when I've gotten into physical confrontations with people, I've felt terrible afterward. It's a stupid communication. It's not without its occasional value, and there were times when somebody deserved to be smacked. And I have deserved to be smacked, too. No one ever wrote about the times I got the shit kicked out of me, because nobody sues you when they kick the shit out of you.

[Q] Playboy: Who kicked the shit out of you?

[A] Penn: I was in a bar on an Indian reservation in Nevada. A guy came up to me and started talking. There'd been some press at that time about the leadership within the tribes' selling out their own tribes--making land deals with white man's corporations--so I asked him some questions about it. I guess he was the son of one of the tribal council. He shoved me, I picked up a chair and hit him with it. Then he and his buddies said, "You're wrong" in their own way.

[Q] Playboy: He knew who you were?

[A] Penn: Yeah, he knew who I was. He was looking for an opportunity, and I gave it to him. Now he can go back and say, "I kicked the shit out of Sean Penn." And I guess I was asking for it, because I'd had a few drinks.

[Q] Playboy: We've heard about your drinking habits. In fact, in a recent interview, Madonna called you a "mean drunk."

[A] Penn: That's what I get for calling her a hoot. Yeah, I drink. [Pauses] If I'm happy when I'm drinking, I'm a happy drunk. If I'm something else, I'm a something-else drunk. But my drinking now is very intermittent. I'll have a little something four days a week and once every two months, I'll binge. In the past, I binged for years.

[Q] Playboy: What changed your habits?

[A] Penn: Let me use an analogy. When I was in jail, one of the great ways to pass the time was to sleep, especially if you're a short-timer who knows he's going to get out on a specific date, when you won't have to pass the time with sleep.

[A] I didn't have a calendar date when I'd be released from my [life] burdens, so to speak, but I knew very clearly that I would be released. That rests on my faith in myself, which I've always had. So I drank to shut out the noise that was going on in the meantime. Alcohol is a wonderful aid in that way. However, it's something to be careful of, because you don't want to combine it with certain "responsible tasks" that you have day to day. But drinking's not something I have to eliminate from my life in order to be responsible. When I drink, I choose my time carefully. I have always been able to put drinking aside to do whatever I had to do, no matter how excessively I was drinking at the time.

[Q] Playboy: Did drinking add to your violent confrontations with the media?

[A] Penn: Not much. But the courts thought so, and I was ordered to get help. The psychiatrist didn't think I had a problem in that area. If anything, alcohol slows you down.

[Q] Playboy: In other words, you could have hit someone twice instead of once?

[A] Penn: No, but maybe I would have been more aware of who was in what corner of what dark alley, about to pop out. I might have made another turn and never gotten into the conflict in the first place. Because I was drinking, I was less careful about what I did or said. But I still don't go for the cliché of "Sean Penn had his hot little acting career and then got crazy with alcohol and a turbulent marriage."

[Q] Playboy: What's the most offensive thing the paparazzi ever did to you?

[A] Penn:[Grins] They said, "We love you, Sean."

[Q] Playboy: That provoked you?

[A] Penn: A famous actress once used me as an example in an interview. I guess she was sympathetic to the problems caused by the paparazzi. She said if she were a guy, she wouldn't just hit [the photographer], she'd kill him. In effect, she was saying that she would go all the way. To me, going all the way means having no witnesses. I had my period of dealing with people the way I thought they should be dealt with, creeping and crawling in the night to get out what I felt--and I got away with it.

[Q] Playboy: You skulked around at night and got revenge?

[A] Penn: I knew I shouldn't have said anything.

[Q] Playboy: But you said it.

[A] Penn: Yeah. I exacted revenge. I don't want to advocate negative things. Yet I also don't apologize for revenge. It's a human reaction. And like I said, I don't have any regrets.

[Q] Playboy: Give us an example of one of those midnight raids.

[A] Penn: Actually, I'm concerned here. It's a funny area. In one sense, it's a silly little thing, and in another sense, the ramifications could be very serious. In either case, it's totally unromantic to put into words. And ultimately incriminating. So let's pass.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you do it?

[A] Penn: Justice. My own righteousness.

[Q] Playboy: Was your sense of justice satisfied?

[A] Penn: Yeah. Yeah.

[Q] Playboy: How did your problems with the press get started?

[A] Penn: It has to do with that marriage bringing me into some kind of perverse spotlight. I suppose that if her car had had a voice and a personality, they would have followed it and taken pictures of it in the garage.

[A] It's all just another reflection of the mass insanity and mass sickness of celebrity and people's interest in it, their jealousy of it and envy of it. It's like a kind of disease. I don't have an entirely objective view of what that is, but I do have a pretty good visceral sense of the most well-known perception of me--that I'm an asshole. If I am an asshole, it's certainly not in the ways or for the reasons that people have come up with.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about a couple of those reasons--some of the rumors that have surrounded you. Is it true that on the set of At Close Range, you beat up someone on the crew for flirting with your co-star, Mary Stuart Masterson?

[A] Penn: That's totally untrue. That had to do with somebody who, just before we started shooting, was apparently drunk and intimidating the actress in the film. I had to have a conversation with him to make sure that we were all going to be able to work together without that kind of thing happening.

[Q] Playboy: We've heard another story: You'd lost your driver's license and were riding a bus. Some guy was staring at you and he said, "Anybody ever tell you that you look like Sean Penn?" and you said, "Yeah." He said he had been an extra in a movie with Penn, and you said, "Oh, really? What did you think of him?" And he said, "Oh, he's a complete asshole."

[A] Penn:[Bemused] I don't remember that. But I've had things like that happen. Once, I was on a public phone and somebody walked up to me and said, "Are you really as big an asshole as they say?" And I said, "Yeah." It's a longer conversation if you say no.

[A] At the same time, there is an up side to all these misperceptions. By virtue of journalists' creating their own personality for Sean, my private life has taken great cover. Not only have I not vomited my real life into the public eye but it's been given a mask by people without my even asking. Even so, there's a hell of a lot more known about me than I would like to have known.

[Q] Playboy: Yet you're here, talking.

[A] Penn: You're asking me why am I doing this interview, and I suppose it's for the same reasons I haven't done other interviews: It seemed right. I'm just going by instinct. Also, I have a movie to promote, though it's never been proven that doing an interview will help. And, look, what's the worst thing that can happen? I've had hatchet pieces done on me. It's just words. And I can get over that.

[Q] Playboy: You used to antagonize the press. One photographer, Mick Paladin, even challenged you to a three-round boxing match, just to prove that you weren't so tough.

[A] Penn: Very funny story about that. After seeing this guy's ads in Variety challenging me, Marlon Brando sent me a note that said something to the effect of, "Dear Sean: Take the fight. Winner take all. HBO. If I were fifty pounds lighter, I'd get in there, too. Best, Marlon."

[Q] Playboy: How do you respond to critics who have suggested that, like Brando, you had enormous potential as an actor but you squandered it at the feet of a driven woman?

[A] Penn: Oh, they want to be my father? They want to be my dad? I'm the blacksheep son. I've got to tell you: I'm so sorry. I'm so apologetic. I really, really need to send them all faxes and apologize. [Chuckles] You know, John Lennon nailed it about having to live with this kind of shit: "People say I'm crazy doing what I'm doing."

[Q] Playboy: One thing you did was spend thirty-two days in jail for assaulting a photographer. What did you do to pass the time, other than sleep?

[A] Penn: I wrote like a motherfucker, but they won't give you anything but pencils. You can't use a pen, because it's against the rules to tattoo yourself. So I wrote a play that I later directed as a workshop thing called The Kindness of Women. And I wrote a movie, totally stream of consciousness, without stopping. I stayed up for three days. I never reread it. It was about the effects of boredom.

[Q] Playboy: Did you read?

[A] Penn: You could read what you took in. Since I surrendered instead of being taken off the street, I was able to take books with me: the essays of Montaigne; a William Burroughs book, which was too depressing to read under the circumstances; some Raymond Carver short stories that depressed the shit out of me; and a bunch of Thurber, which was great. Very light. I recommend Thurber for everybody in jail. I thought my books would last me the whole month, and they lasted two days.

[Q] Playboy: Any interesting cellmates to talk with?

[A] Penn: The "night stalker," Richard Ramirez, was in the cell across the way. Raymond Buckey [the defendant in the McMartin preschool molestation case] was in the cell next to me. This was not a fucking garden party. You're in an eight-and-a-half-foot-by-eleven-foot cell all by yourself. You eat in your cell. And in protective custody, on the short time, they do not owe you any time out of your cell, except for a ten-minute phone call per day and a twenty-minute visit. So, at best, you're out of your cell thirty minutes a day. Otherwise, it's four concrete walls with an iron door, with a little wired Plexiglas window. So you can see each other. Ramirez and I had one thing in common: We're both insomniacs. I'd look across at him and he'd look across at me.

[Q] Playboy: Did you talk to Ramirez or Buckey?

[A] Penn: No. I talked to Buckey only once. When you're at visits or on the phone, you're handcuffed to a rail with one hand. Buckey and I were handcuffed by the phones and there was an emergency on the floor. These alarms went off while we were in the phone area, so they left one guard in the booth where he could see us. Buckey told me about his case.

[A] Ramirez and I had to take showers at the same time a lot, because we were both high-priority inmates, because of our high profiles. There were threats on us both. Ramirez asked for my autograph once. I said, "I'll give you mine if you'll give me yours." Paper passing is contraband, so he asked a guard and the guard figured he wanted to be the cupid in the situation. Actually, this guard was a decent guy. He brought over Ramirez' autograph. It read, "Dear Sean: Stay tough and hit 'em again. Richard Ramirez, 666." It included a pentagram and a very good illustration of his view of the Devil. So I wrote him back something to the effect of, "Dear Richard: It's impossible to be incarcerated and not feel a certain kinship with your fellow inmates. Well, Richard, I've done the impossible. I feel absolutely no kinship with you." He got a kick out of it. He had a sense of humor.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't people want to kill Buckey, since that was before the child-molestation charges were dropped? Wasn't he high priority?

[A] Penn: Oh, yeah. But where he was, they had that kinship. They all knew each other. Of course, they all would whisper to you on the side, "This guy's really a psycho. I only chopped off my wife's head, but this guy.... " [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Did you end up feeling sorry for any of them?

[A] Penn: I'll tell you, there's nothing like being in jail and hearing the screams of somebody who's going to be in there for the rest of his life. At night, you're trying to sleep and you hear these fucking primal screams. When you think about what it's like being in jail, you think to yourself, These people don't deserve to be released, but nobody deserves this.

[Q] Playboy: Was Ramirez a screamer?

[A] Penn: Ramirez was odd. He was like a textbook psycho. He was funny. What he did was obviously horrible, but in jail, he was like the typical bad actor. He was like the psychos on The Mod Squad. He'd jerk off a lot when nurses were around. He'd start jerking off and laugh this manic laugh. Yeah, he was a big star there.

[Q] Playboy: You must have felt terribly out of place in jail.

[A] Penn: The whole idea that I was in jail was silly.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you plead no contest instead of fighting?

[A] Penn: I was on probation from an assault-and-battery charge. I had a suspended sentence, which means they own you; don't fuck up. One typical condition of probation is that you can't commit violence on anybody. Break no laws. But a further condition for me was "Commit no violence on anybody." I told my lawyers it seemed unconstitutional. They could have nailed me for defending myself. We were discussing that when I got into this stupid thing on Venice Beach with some guy, so now I had another charge. Which, on its own, I would have defended myself against and probably won. The press made it out to be a lot of shit, like I had attacked this extra. It wasn't the case. The guy spit on me, and it's a long story. While we were waiting for the hearing date, I was driving up from a friend's house in San Pedro, and I had done a bad thing--which was get in my car drunk. I saw the police and I hit the gas. I just wanted to get out of there. And they caught me. So I got arrested for drunk driving, and I deserved that. I think it's a terrible thing to do, and it wasn't the first time that I had done it. I knew it was stupid and reckless. I thought it would be wrong to fight it. It goes beyond self-destructive when you start including other people, potentially. So I went to the lawyers and we decided to approach the judge and make the best deal we could. That was sixty days, and a good day for a good day, and I did half of it.

[Q] Playboy: Did you get any special treatment in jail?

[A] Penn: The press was saying I got sushi dinners. Bullshit. In L.A. County Jail, they stick a finger up your ass and tell you, "OK, you don't have a gun." There isn't a sheet in the place that doesn't have shit stains on it. And then they tell me I was getting preferential treatment.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't your media problems actually begin when you refused to do interviews for Racing with the Moon?

[A] Penn: Bingo. I wouldn't play the game. I'd had no problems at all with the press up to that time. I was doing what I wanted to do; I was acting, trying to do the best job that I could. Then the time came to publicize the film. Great, I wanted people to see it. I'd worked hard. But I was busy in Mexico shooting another movie. There wasn't time to allow me to participate in the publicity for the film. But the people involved in that movie didn't respect my answer when I said no, and then they did something I don't believe has been done any other time. They spoke in public against the actor who was in their movie. They insinuated that I had influenced the other actors [not to do publicity], which was totally bogus.

[Q] Playboy: Wasn't that because you and your co-star, Elizabeth McGovern, were an item at the time and she didn't do publicity either?

[A] Penn: They assumed that because they're cowards and they didn't look at the truth. It was as if they realized that the wolves needed some food. So they said, "Here he is. His name is Sean Penn. Have a feast." You couldn't say the press started it. It was the people I was working for and/or with.

[Q] Playboy: Would you have done publicity if you'd had time?

[A] Penn: Frankly, I don't feel publicity is my responsibility as an actor. They don't ask me what I think about cutting the movie or the music. I've tended to help in the publicity when I've been included in the process beyond what I've been paid for. A good example is At Close Range, where the director, James Foley, and I worked closely together. When I'm paid to act, that's what I'll do.

[A] Unfortunately, Racing with the Moon turned into one of the most boring melodramas of the Eighties: The Pugnacious Asshole Story, starring Sean Penn. It was my biggest hit. It was all over the place.

[Q] Playboy: Some people suggested that you didn't do interviews because your idol, Robert De Niro, didn't.

[A] Penn: That's a good example of the bullshit the press comes up with. With all due respect to Robert De Niro, who I think is as fine an actor as there has ever been, I've never had an idol. Fuck, it'd be an embarrassing thought even if I had felt it. Never in my stupidest fucking moment would I have said that.

[Q] Playboy: How did all this bad press affect your acting?

[A] Penn: It didn't. I was always very conscious of the things that I needed to work on as an actor; where I was weaker and where I was stronger. That is not to say that it wasn't a contributing factor to some bad choices that put me in a situation--one situation in particular--where I just said, "I don't give a fuck." I just stayed drunk the whole fucking time.

[Q] Playboy: Which movie?

[A] Penn: I think you could probably tell me.

[Q] Playboy:Shanghai Surprise?

[A] Penn:[Laughs] You're a good guesser. I got myself into a situation with a bunch of cowards. We made a cowardly movie together. I was so pissed off and preoccupied with other things that it's the one time I took a movie entirely for the pay check. And also because there were people who wanted me to do it.

[Q] Playboy: People such as Madonna?

[A] Penn: Yeah. And they offered me a lot of money. I just said, "Fuck it, I'll do it."

[Q] Playboy: Did you realize it was a self-destructive act when you did it?

[A] Penn: Oh, yeah, yeah. But I didn't know quite how self-destructive. I didn't in my wildest imagination picture such a group of misfits aiding and abetting my self-destruction. I felt like the guy in the bar who picks a fight with the biggest fucking guy there because he knows all his buddies are going to back him, and it turns out all his buddies are blind and crippled. I didn't expect quite the beating I got. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Certainly, by that time in your career, you were wise to the way Hollywood works. Shanghai Surprise was a big studio production. Aren't big studios often to blame for bad movies, with their emphasis on marketing and budgets?

[A] Penn: Not the studios. It's directors, writers and actors. I go to fewer and fewer movies that I give two shits about. Most are packages of negative spirit, designed to insulate those who have and pretend to offer something from those who don't. I'm interested in films only when the film maker's dreams are being shared with me, not when he or she is saying, "You don't have enough dreams yourself, so I'm going to make some up for you." When I walk into a theater, I'm just hoping, "Please, don't lie to me." The reason so many of these people don't look inside themselves and ask, What do I really want to say? is that they're cowards. Sure, there are people who have an interest in things that matter, but then they go into a meeting with a studio executive and apologize for what they're trying to do. If you start editing and modifying, which is what happens to most people, who the fuck wants to put up money to support that? I've been in so many of these meetings where the executives have some genuine interest in the project. Sometimes they're embattled themselves, but they do want to make good movies. Some of these guys do get it.

[Q] Playboy: If passion were all it took....

[A] Penn: I'm not saying studios will do any movie you want just because you believe in it, but you haven't got a chance in hell to do anything worth while if you're showing your fear from the start.

[A] There are film makers who made really wonderful movies early in their careers and then went straight to hell. But I'm not going to name anybody, because they know who they are. Everybody knows who they are. They're the ones who don't sleep well at night. I don't sleep well at night because they exist. So none of us are sleeping. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Who is committed?

[A] Penn: Terry Gilliam. His films have been good and bad--but they're always his fucking dream, because nobody else has dreams like that. This guy should be funded by the Government. They should just give him whatever he spends every year and let him make his movies. And it's not even my kind of movie. But you know that this guy is sharing something sort of magical, and that's great.

[Q] Playboy: What about those film makers who don't have a dream to share?

[A] Penn: They should do my laundry--it's backing up. [Smiles] Most of these actors should find out what it is that they really take pride in. It certainly isn't acting.

[Q] Playboy: Now that you're talking about quitting acting, perhaps you'd care to characterize your career.

[A] Penn: Well, at the risk of sounding falsely humble, I think I did pretty insignificantly and made it more insignificant by ending up so overburdened with [unpopularity]. That affects the perception of a performance.

[Q] Playboy: Do you disavow your acting?

[A] Penn: I respect acting as a craft. But for me, the craft eventually became a set of addict's works, like a hypodermic needle. If I didn't act, I could feel it physically, like I was gonna have a withdrawal. So I acted. And, like a lot of addicts feel about the drug, acting became my lover and I thought of it in very positive terms. But when it didn't love me back, it started hurting me. It showed its true face and I realized it wasn't what I was built for.

[Q] Playboy: Were you surprised to learn how good you were as an actor?

[A] Penn: I was perceived as good by some and not by others.

[Q] Playboy: But generally--

[A] Penn: Hey, I'm not going to accuse myself of being a good actor in public.

[Q] Playboy: You can't deny you stood out from the crowd.

[A] Penn: There were only a few other young actors at that time doing anything that made any sense. As time went on, there were fewer and fewer. Now I think ninety-nine percent of the young actors coming up should really do my laundry. [Smiles] They should have a wing of the Screen Actor's Guild, the Acting Police, to take care of these people. So I wasn't surprised that I achieved some degree of success. If I made an impression, it wasn't against incredible odds.

[Q] Playboy: You started out in Taps, with Tim Hutton and Tom Cruise. What did you think was going to happen to the three of you? Do you respect these men as actors?

[A] Penn: Yeah. Taps started a whole generation of youth movies. Tim Hutton had just done Ordinary People, and he opened the door for young actors. He'd won an Academy Award. It was easy to perceive him as a real talented actor. My expectation is that he'll go on doing good work and continue to be a movie star. Tom Cruise surprised me a lot. Not so much that he became a big star--because I think he's done some very good work--and not because I didn't think he was gifted; but he seemed so naïve at the time that I worried if he was going to get lost on his way home. I can't say I'd have called his future correctly.

[Q] Playboy: You've always refused to talk about your preparation for a role. Why?

[A] Penn: You turn on the television, which is a sin to do in the first place, and all you see is these behind-the-scenes things now, on every cable station. This is the last fucking thing in the world that they should do to the movies. The last fucking thing. People can't enjoy the experience of the movies as much as they used to. They enjoy talking about special effects and how things were done. It just drives me nuts. And the worst part of all, of course, is the actors who talk about how they created their roles. They go on and on and on about this and that bullshit. That better be one great fucking performance if it's so worth talking about. And it never is.

[Q] Playboy: At what point did you realize you wanted to stop acting?

[A] Penn: When I realized it hurt too much. I was doing Hurlyburly, a wonderfully written play by David Rabe. The part was fascinating. Yet every night, it hurt. So I asked myself, What the fuck am I doing?

[Q] Playboy: Yet you still did more movies.

[A] Penn: Yeah. I had already committed to do another movie. I decided that would be the last time I'd act. It was We're No Angels. But I had a very difficult time there, through nobody's fault but my own. I was left with that petty feeling of wanting to finish with a better experience. So State of Grace was offered and it was interesting. I worked with a director, Phil Joanou, who was at the beginning of his career. He has an excessive amount of enthusiasm about film and a lot of knowledge about it in areas that I was not as knowledgeable about. It was a treat for me, because I knew I was going to direct and there were a lot of things about directing that I learned working with him. He clearly should not be doing my laundry.

[Q] Playboy: Now you've become a director. How did The Indian Runner evolve?

[A] Penn: Before Springsteen's Nebraska came out, I heard his song Highway Patrolman on a demo that a friend had, and I knew Bruce remotely. Later, I happened to be around when he was on the phone with somebody, and I got on to tell him that I'd responded very strongly to that record and, in particular, that song. I offhandedly said I'd like to make a movie of it someday, and he offhandedly said OK. At that time, I was thinking more as an actor. I just kept thinking about it over the years and started to get one picture after another in my head. When I was up in Vancouver making We're No Angels, I started passing the time between shots at the typewriter and just wrote it.

[Q] Playboy: Is this your first screenplay?

[A] Penn: [Laughs] No. I've got a shelf full of them.

[Q] Playboy: Some people call The Indian Runner a meditation on the problems of contemporary masculinity.

[A] Penn: As the director and writer, I think most people would expect me to be the expert here. Unfortunately, I don't feel that my thoughts on what the movie is about are any more informed than those of somebody who goes to see it. So I don't want to get into it. I'm not doing a Bob Dylan on you--I'd love to have him explain a few things about his songs to me--but I'd really prefer that the thing spoke for itself when it comes to that sort of question.

[Q] Playboy: Is The Indian Runner a coming-of-age story?

[A] Penn: Not in the traditional sense of coming-of-age stories, as the term is applied at development meetings in Los Angeles, California. That's a first-fuck issue. I think there's yet to be a truly significant coming-of-age film. They're either too soft because adults are dealing with their own vision of how they'd like to see children, or they're cliches. And I understand that. It would be very difficult to make a film about the coming of age.

[Q] Playboy: The reviews from Cannes for The Indian Runner were generally good, but reviews don't pay the bills. How important is it for your debut effort to make money?

[A] Penn: Frankly, I haven't really thought about making money with this movie, except in the most superficial sense. You do your work and you hope to be able to continue to do your work. Monetary success is not absolutely necessary to keep on directing. I think you have to be responsible to the idea as you expressed it to those who have to worry about the money. You go in and you tell a story, and it affects someone or it doesn't. And if it does affect them, and they decide they want to put up the money for it, the rest is their problem, financially. Your problem is to be responsible to tell the story that they paid for. Also, I'm not worried about being able to get money together. I'm a scrapper. I'll come up with it. I'll sell lemonade on Santa Monica Boulevard to make the movies. I'll steal it. As a celebrity, you get invited to Hollywood parties, and who the hell is going to suspect you of taking the jewels? And there are lots of handbags.

[Q] Playboy: If you won an Oscar, would you accept it?

[A] Penn: [Laughs] What the fuck is that all about? Have you seen that program lately? It's a ship of fools. I just don't get it. I don't get that nobody sees how fucking venal it is.

[Q] Playboy: Suppose the film is a success and the press starts to like you. Can you handle it?

[A] Penn: No! Please don't like me. The positive stuff is just as damaging as the negative and just as untrue. A good rule is that if too many people like you, you're doing something wrong. Very fucking wrong. If there's not somebody out to get you, you ain't shit.

[Q] Playboy: You said before that one reason the press focused on you was your marriage to Madonna. Let's talk about that.

[A] Penn: Let's don't. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: There was a lot of ink about your wedding. Anything you'd like to set straight about that circus?

[A] Penn: The thing I'd like to correct is the perception that the whole thing was a circus and a fiasco. In fact, only the ceremony outside was a fiasco, because little punky news jerks got up in a helicopter to be Peeping Toms and ruin things. But once it got under the tent, it was just fine.

[Q] Playboy: Didn't you later tell one newsman, "I wish your helicopter had crashed and burned"?

[A] Penn: It will one day.

[Q] Playboy: Let's clear something up: Were you actually shooting at the helicopters? Didn't a friend have to disarm you?

[A] Penn: Nobody had to take the gun away.

[Q] Playboy: What does that mean?

[A] Penn: [Chuckles] I don't remember--on the grounds that it may incriminate me. [Pauses] I've been misquoted before in an interview, where someone reported that I said, "I like to drink and I like to brawl." That came back to haunt me in a deposition. The other guy's lawyer was using it. So, did I shoot at the helicopters? I, uh, I don't know.

[Q] Playboy: But there's a big smile on your face.

[A] Penn: Well, so you'll write that down. Fair enough? Let me put it this way: I have never shot a firearm at anything I considered to be a human life form.

[Q] Playboy: Can you describe the hell of the Madonna era?

[A] Penn: Hell is your word.

[Q] Playboy: What's your word?

[A] Penn: Period of insufficient peace. It was very uncomfortable for me to be in a situation where there was so much [public] attention on nothing.

[Q] Playboy: But considering Madonna's high profile, as well as your own earlier reputation, that couldn't have been a big surprise to you.

[A] Penn: You have to understand: When Madonna and I got together, she was an up-and-coming star. She was not a superstar; she was not an icon. She hadn't even gone on tour yet. And that tour, before we got married, didn't indicate to me the enormity of what was coming. But soon she became public property, and her husband-to-be was treated likewise. I knew a lot of people who were bigger stars who had much more peaceful lives. My understanding of the direction that Madonna was choosing was a misunderstanding. And the degree to which she would be choosing, and chosen for, such an intense spotlight was not something that I had seen in the cards. So that was a surprise. It was a big surprise.

[Q] Playboy: When did the truth hit you?

[A] Penn: I started to get the idea very shortly after we were together, but by then, there's that heart thing that gets involved. You don't walk away so easily just because something is a little difficult. And you don't know how long certain things are going to last. That might have passed.

[Q] Playboy: You mean she could have been a flash in the pan?

[A] Penn: Or it could have just neutralized itself. There's a very big difference between her and just about anybody else you can name. I don't think anyone else is carrying around that sort of Beatles- or Elvis Presley-size persona, saturating the world. Sure, that was a surprise.

[Q] Playboy: How did you feel about seeing your wife nude in this magazine?

[A] Penn: Well, at the time, she was very upset about it. I don't believe it should be legal to publish photographs of people without their approval. If they sign a release, that's another story. I don't know what Madonna did. I just know that the person I cared a lot about in my life at the time was very upset by the whole thing, so I wasn't pleased. But as far as the reaction of a husband seeing his wife's naked pictures published, I didn't care about that.

[Q] Playboy: It seems that when those pictures were published, she was a lot more private. Since then, she has really exposed herself in all sorts of ways.

[A] Penn: [Chuckles] I think she's much more liberated now, doing the things that she likes to do. She's probably a much happier person.

[Q] Playboy: Ultimately, why did the marriage crumble?

[A] Penn: I can just say it ended. It didn't end without both of us, to the best of our abilities, giving it a scout's try to make it work out. It just didn't work out. I guess we got to a point where we felt comfortable enough with the idea of not being together to split.

[Q] Playboy: That seems anticlimactic for such a great romance.

[A] Penn: In our eyes, it was just like any other romance. Apart from all the fanfare that existed in the relationship, we didn't have a single tiny little problem that hasn't been experienced by millions and millions of people over and over again.

[Q] Playboy: But you aren't like millions of other people.

[A] Penn:I was. I won't answer for her, but, yes, I was. Yes, I am. That's all there is to it.

[Q] Playboy: Were there any hints at the beginning that things might go sour?

[A] Penn: Here's one thing that happened. She had a soap-opera law firm that, from the beginning, was very concerned about her being married in the state of California. However, I on no day on this earth am going to sign a prenuptial agreement, which I equate with a death warrant on a marriage. Nor am I, under the worst circumstances, going to take a penny of somebody else's change. Those pressures came at the beginning, and they came like gangbusters at the end. This bunch of pathetic little doggy-poos were, in effect, accusing me of being some kind of a mooch. They found out otherwise.

[Q] Playboy: You could have asked for half of Madonna's fortune.

[A] Penn: I could have gone any way I wanted. There's community property in California. There were reports in the press that I somehow extracted the house in Malibu. Check the public record: The only things that we owned together were the two houses. She took one, I took the other. Those were the only things that we both put up cash for; everything else was separate and stayed separate. The reason I bring this up is that those kinds of influences became part of my daily life, because she had become a one-person megacompany, and all those people were on the telephone with her every day.

[Q] Playboy: What you're saying is that even before you two got married, her handlers had big plans and they wanted--

[A] Penn: To make sure I wasn't looking for cash.

[Q] Playboy: That seems odd. Weren't you the bigger star at the time?

[A] Penn: Maybe for the first minute we were together. But that changed very quickly.

[Q] Playboy: Did she want you to sign the prenuptial?

[A] Penn: I don't want to get into what she wanted specifically. I'll just say that it was a bother.

[Q] Playboy: Wasn't your drinking another problem?

[A] Penn: [Chuckles] Really? Where did you hear that? We could come down to specifics on these things and they wouldn't answer it any better, because who's to say why any marriage doesn't work, finally?

[Q] Playboy: Do you think you two ever had a chance?

[A] Penn: No wa-ay. Under the circumstances of what happened with her? No way. But I wasn't conscious of it going in. Ultimately, we had different value systems.

[Q] Playboy: One thing that seems clear from Madonna's latest round of interviews is that she's very down on men. For instance, she was quoted in Newsweek as saying, "Straight men need to be emasculated. I'm sorry. They all need to be slapped around. Every straight guy should have a man's tongue in his mouth at least once."

[A] Penn: [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Is that the Madonna you know?

[A] Penn: It's her wit, yeah.

[Q] Playboy: Is that wit or what she believes?

[A] Penn: Look, I'm not any better an expert on her than anybody else. I don't know her any better from having been with her. I was drunk most of the time, anyway. But whatever anybody thinks about what she does, she serves as a brilliant reflection of what people respond to and what they want to see--on every level. In very complex ways and in very superficial ways. I find her statements like that pretty amusing.

[Q] Playboy: Do you like Madonna, after all is said and done?

[A] Penn: Yeah. I just don't want her living at my house.

[Q] Playboy: When she did, did she do your laundry?

[A] Penn: Absolutely. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: We have to ask this, so help us out: What about the biggest rumor, that Sean-Penn-tied-up-Madonna-for-nine-hours thing?

[A] Penn: Don't forget the rest of it: And dressed her up like a turkey. After I read that stuff, I thought long and hard about what one would do to dress someone up like a turkey. And I nailed it. I figured you've got to get out the Playtex glove, blow it up and put the glove over the head. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Is any of it true?

[A] Penn: I was looking at locations in Vancouver when I read about it. At that point it was...a welcome fantasy. It was also a great disappointment to some of my more perverse acquaintances to tell them that it hadn't occurred.

[Q] Playboy: So you never tied her up?

[A] Penn: My biggest question is, Why didn't anybody ever ask her that? She can tell them that I didn't.

[Q] Playboy: What did occur on that last day?

[A] Penn: A SWAT team surrounded my house and came in every door. But it happened because on the day that we split up, she developed a concern that if she were to return to the house, she would get a very severe haircut.

[Q] Playboy: You mean haircut of head hair?

[A] Penn: I think that's what she thought. So she took this concern to the local authorities, who came back up to the house. She felt the responsible thing to do would be to inform them--since they were coming up there ostensibly to keep her from getting a haircut and to let her gather some additional personal effects--that there were firearms in the house.

[Q] Playboy: True?

[A] Penn: Uh, yes.

[Q] Playboy: What were you doing when the cops arrived?

[A] Penn: Eating cereal.

[Q] Playboy: Did they slap you against the wall?

[A] Penn: No, they did what they had to do pretty decently, considering that they thought they were coming in to a volatile situation with firearms.

[Q] Playboy: What about the charges Madonna supposedly filed and then withdrew?

[A] Penn: [Quickly] She never filed any charges at all. They didn't need a search warrant to come in, because she was a coowner of the house. Go down to the D.A.'s office or call them up. There's no charges. I was never arrested.

[Q] Playboy: Did you introduce her to Warren Beatty?

[A] Penn: Yeah.

[Q] Playboy: How did that happen?

[A] Penn: "Warren, this is Madonna. Madonna, this is Warren." [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Were you surprised that she took up with Warren after you broke up?

[A] Penn: I was amazed to see such cleanly poetic justice occur. I couldn't have imagined a bolder cliché.

[Q] Playboy: Now you're leading a new life, living with Robin Wright and your daughter. Why is it working this time?

[A] Penn: We tend to speak the same language. Robin is a deeply caring person who spends very little time obsessing about her own crosses to bear.

[Q] Playboy: What do you know about relationships now that you didn't know when you were with Madonna?

[A] Penn: I don't function on a check list as much as I used to. By the time I met Robin, my list of expectations had been put in the shredder.

[Q] Playboy: What are you looking for?

[A] Penn: I wouldn't be in the relationship I'm in now if Robin weren't challenging and didn't have a more heightened awareness in certain areas than I have. And I hope I give the same back. Those qualities have always been attractive with any of the relationships I've been in. I wouldn't have had a child with Robin if I hadn't thought that her resources as a human being weren't limitless. Not only for myself, because only God knows if a relationship lasts forever or not, but for the child's sake.

[Q] Playboy: You and Robin have yet to marry. Did you plan this child?

[A] Penn: I couldn't say that. [Smiles] Let's call it a happy accident.

[Q] Playboy: What is your role in child care? What's your philosophy?

[A] Penn: Wipe a lot of tushy, do a lot of burping. And when I look into her eyes, I try not to be a liar.

[Q] Playboy: You were there for the birth?

[A] Penn: Yeah. Cut the cord and everything. We had a Caesarean. I watched the surgeon put his arm halfway up inside her torso, through this hole in her gut. She looked up at me and said, "Did they cut yet?" I said, "Oh, yeah, they cut."

[Q] Playboy: After the divorce and before meeting Robin, were you dating a lot?

[A] Penn: I dated, but with only the most lascivious intentions. It took me a while to sort out what had happened before getting into something new.

[Q] Playboy: You must have been considered a fairly eligible bachelor.

[A] Penn: I've gotta be way, way, way down toward the bottom of the list of studs who ever drove down Sunset Boulevard.

[Q] Playboy: Couldn't you get chicks just because you were a movie star?

[A] Penn: Well, I might have gotten chicks, but I might have also said, "Geez, sorry: drank too much." I've used that excuse a few times. If I ain't comfortable with somebody, the plumbing ain't gonna work. Ultimately, love is more important than anything. Love is the only interesting thing. Love and compassion. Compassion. Even saying the word makes me feel good things. I grew up in a household very full of compassion. I'm not saying that it wasn't a judgmental household in some ways, but there was some kind of overwhelming bottom line, overwhelming compassion, in my parents.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk a bit about growing up. What are the significant moments of your childhood?

[A] Penn: I grew up all over the San Fernando Valley, but when I was ten, I moved to the beach. I lived for seven years at Point Dume. I spent most of my childhood surfing. So, yeah, there are waves that I'll never forget. Surfing was purer then. People talk about how bad the Seventies were musically and culturally; but surfing is the one thing that was at its height in the Seventies. I define surfing, then, as an art form. It was truly about matching the energy of the wave. It was a harmony and there was poetry to it. There was a spiritual aspect to surfing then. Now it's just a sport.

[Q] Playboy: What happened?

[A] Penn: The Seventies were to surfing what rehearsals are to a play. Sometimes you get magic in a rehearsal because it's new. And in the Seventies, short boards were new. It was that transition period and surfing was never better. It was so fluid. Now it's so aggressive, and it really represents our times. It's like a mirror. Surfing is an angry sport. They're ripping these beautiful waves to shreds. There was a time when the wave and the surfer were intact and it was magic.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you leave the water?

[A] Penn: Hey, don't depress me. I don't want to think that I have left the water. Not a day has gone by when I haven't said, "Gotta get back in the water." I keep thinking that maybe tomorrow I'll have the time to get out there and do that. If I were to suggest what to put on my tombstone, it would probably be Sean Penn, Surfer, died whenever I do.

[Q] Playboy: What was your school experience like?

[A] Penn: I had a terrible school experience. I regret having gone to school. I think I missed a lot of opportunities to see life during that period. I cannot resolve that issue, and I have to start thinking more about it because of just having had a child whose time will come for education. But I can think of very few positive things about school.

[Q] Playboy: Right from the beginning?

[A] Penn: From the beginning. It was a thirteen-year sentence. It was hell. Boring. Oh, painfully boring. Nothing that interested me, aside from a history class in junior high school. I had a history teacher who understood what it was to talk about life, a guy named Leonard Vincent. He was a brilliant teacher. So if I got one thing out of school, it was running into him. But aside from that, I can't think of one positive fucking thing. There wasn't one book I read I wouldn't have read on my own.

[Q] Playboy: At least you learned how to read.

[A] Penn: Schools sure don't teach you how to read--look at the illiteracy rate. My mother taught me how to read.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of trouble did you get into at school?

[A] Penn: I wouldn't call myself a delinquent student. I basically mastered the ditch. Actually, I was pretty invisible most of the time. I passed those hours and worked very hard at not doing my homework.

[Q] Playboy: What did you want to be when you grew up?

[A] Penn: In elementary school, I wanted to be a geologist, which to me at the time meant rock hunting. In junior high school, I wanted to surf. That's the beginning and end of that story. And in high school, I decided that the most interesting person around was F. Lee Bailey. I read The Defense Never Rests and his other book, and I decided that I was going to continue Darrow's line. And that lasted until my senior year, when I realized that my grades were not good enough to go to the law school of choice. Besides, I'd had it with school altogether. If I couldn't just go out and practice law, I would go out and be an actor.

[Q] Playboy: You've had a lot of friends, it seems, who are older men--Dennis Hopper, Charles Bukowski. And you dedicate The Indian Runner to the late Hal Ashby and the late John Cassavetes. What contributions have these men made to your life? Were they mentors?

[A] Penn: You could construe some of those men as mentors--inadvertently. In fact, they are just friends of mine from whom I've gotten a lot of inspiration and to whom I hope I've given some back. They are friendships where wisdom lies a little heavier in their hands than in mine. But it's not something I want to analyze. It makes their friendship into a commodity, and I don't want to treat it that way in public.

[Q] Playboy: Will you explain why you dedicated your film to Ashby and Cassavetes?

[A] Penn: Those two guys, probably more than anybody else, made films that, to me, were provocative, personal, emotional expressions. They made films in a more open way than many of the other people I respect. John wrote most of the films that he directed. Hal Ashby's camera never announced itself. Hal Ashby never announced himself. They made the kind of movies I am the audience for. I like anybody whose work represents who he is. Cassavetes was somebody you couldn't have an uninteresting conversation with. Same thing about Hal Ashby. And there wasn't anything, with either one of them, in which they didn't find an incredible degree of humor. And that's reflected in their movies.

[Q] Playboy: What situations in your life reflect that kind of humor?

[A] Penn: SWAT teams surrounding my house because they're afraid I'm going to cut somebody's hair off. I've got to tell you: The timing was amazing. Hal lived nearby, and he'd often come up and we'd play pool together. Later that afternoon, I was at a memorial for his passing. The only thing I could think of was how hard he'd have laughed.

[Q] Playboy: Did you go to them for words of wisdom?

[A] Penn: I hate words of wisdom. It's like people say to me, "Oh, it's so good for you that you're directing now." How the fuck do you know what's good for me? You don't even know me. Maybe it's good now, maybe it won't be later. Ashby and Cassavetes never said bullshit like that. However, I did ask Chris Walken something once, when life seemed like such a roller coaster. I said, "You're a bit older than me. Does it always stay such a roller coaster?" And he said, "It stays a roller coaster. You just learn to enjoy the ride." So I suppose if you want to quantify my relationships with older men, it's that I like being around people who are enjoying the ride, however treacherous it might be. I have an easier time in the company of people who are a part of life, willing to risk life and are comfortable rolling with the punches. And that's the first time I've really thought about that.

[Q] Playboy: Do you enjoy the company of men more than women?

[A] Penn: I find hanging out with the guys to be a meditation. I hang out with guys who are very comfortable not looking at me and not having me look back at them. Talking and not caring if I'm listening. Not listening when I'm talking. Take all the conversation and it adds up to zilch. You experience each other that way. It's inadvertent, not organized. It's just there. It's like being by yourself without being by yourself. When you're a well known person, it's easier if you've got a couple of people around just because you're in conversation. And being with people I know already enables me to just be there, see the world a little bit and not hide away in my house--which is what I would do otherwise.

[A] The older you get, the more you start to realize when you're wasting your time. Everybody sits around on Friday night thinking, Oh, God, I've got to go out there and do this and that--and there's nobody out there. There isn't anything out there.

[Q] Playboy: What about women?

[A] Penn: Well, there's that thing you can do with women that you can't do with men. There's a couple of things, there's a lot of things! [Laughs] But there aren't a lot of women who are comfortable when you pay them no attention.

[Q] Playboy: Do you believe in God?

[A] Penn: Well, you know, there's a quote at the end of The Indian Runner: "Every child born comes with a message that God is not yet discouraged of man." The only thing that bothers me about that quote is the presence of the word God. I wouldn't say that I don't believe in God, but I don't believe in a Christian God, and I don't believe in a Jewish God. We won't talk about the ayatollah's God, because I don't want to have to wear a blond wig and get tit implants and hide in Mexico.

[Q] Playboy: OK. Let's end where we began: Are you the same guy you used to be?

[A] Penn: It's said that every seven years, you've got a whole new set of cells in your body. And you've got a whole new set of experiences. So I still don't think it would be accurate to say I've turned my life around. I think that lives float on the ocean. The swells come up and you go through lulls, and there's storms.

[A] I don't know what tomorrow's going to bring, and I don't look at yesterday as tragic. I've never had any kind of spiritual or physical rehabilitation, and I'm not sure that I've ever been dehabilitated in the first place. I would just say that in life, as in surfing, you take off on a big wave over a shallow reef, and you find out if you're capable of making the turn before you hit the reef. You might take off out of that peak a few times and get bashed into that reef a few times, and then at a certain point you say to yourself, Do I just need more practice on this reef or is this reef bigger than I am? Should I just move over to the shoulder a little bit? So you move over to the shoulder and you're doing just fine there, and all of a sudden, the bottom changes and you've got a new reef under you. Can you make that one or not? I don't know.

[Q] Playboy: But you do move over to the shoulder now and again.

[A] Penn: I move over to the shoulder now and again. But sometimes I move to the far side of the reef just to see if I can go right on through it.

[Q] Playboy: Is this, then, Sean Penn's spiritual foundation?

[A] Penn: Can I repeat myself repeating John Lennon? "I don't believe in Beatles; I just believe in me."

"I apologize to the people who know some of those people I hit--and that I didn't hit them harder."

"In elementary school, I wanted to be a geologist, which to me at the time meant rock hunting. In junior high school, I wanted to surf."