Sean Penn
Anger can be a problem, but it has tremendous potential, too. It's just figuring out what to do with it.Collection: Anger
We've let the blade of our innocence dull over time, and it's only in innocence that you find any kind of magic, any kind of courage.Collection: Courage
That on a romantic level, if you feel it about somebody and it's pure, it means that they do too.Collection: Romantic
Child-rearing is my main interest now. I'm a hands-on father.Collection: Dad
Marriage ain't easy, but it's great most of the time.Collection: Marriage
There's a lot of mediocrity being celebrated, and a lot of wonderful stuff being ignored or discouraged.
I'm a huge Woody Allen fan. Good movie, bad movie, it doesn't matter - I just like his movies.
'The Indian Runner' was easy. It had been incubating in me for eight years, and by the time I sat down to write the thing, I had all the pictures in my head.
I like to believe that love is a reciprocal thing, that it can't really be felt, truly, by one.
I've never really been one to get what they call stage fright so much.
I had a house burn down once, and everything in life burned, except my family, and it was so liberating. I didn't have a bad moment about it. It sort of reinvigorated my interest in a lot of things.
I can always see light in any situation. It's just the way I'm made.
I'm not a breakfast eater.
I've been a road-rat since I got my driver's licence at 16, so I've probably gone across America 20 times.
I don't have any particular excitement about working with any specific director or actor at this point.
I love stories about people who are smart enough to know that what they're doing is destroying them, but that knowing that doesn't help them.
I love acting, truly my favorite people are actors.
My favorite thing to do is not act - it's that simple.
I really love to make movies.
In between, I go broke because I seem to do movies where you're not paid a lot as an actor.
There's not a lot of good movies being made.
If you're willing to put two thoughts into a picture then you're already ahead of the game.
Somewhere along the line, the actions of this government are the actions of me.
Sacrificing American soldiers or innocent civilians in an unprecedented preemptive attack on a separate sovereign nation may well prove itself a most temporary medicine.
Love is a mess, at best, and I figure it can be very real in spite of all the things people try to attach to it.
The bottom line is, you love your wife, you do your best with that.
Yeah, I had actually tried to stop acting before I made Dead Man Walking.
It has nothing to do with the emotional demands of a role; I've done comedies that are as draining to me as any drama.
You try to do your best at what you're getting paid for.
Well, look at all of these summer blockbusters. You can't help but laugh a little, because you've already seen a lot of these movies 482 times.
Oh, I'm a big-mouth. I said a lot of things.
On any movie I'm involved with, I say what I think.
There is no re-inventing the wheel.
So if we have anything original to offer, it's to speak from our own life about the society we're in.
What happens is things come to you - director, script - and if you respond to it, it's because it's tapping into some part of what's inside you, and different roles tap into different parts.
I think we all have light and dark inside us.
I think life's an irrational obsession.
Well, I think that when you direct a movie or write it. And in the case of the two movies I did, I wrote and directed, they occupy a special place for you.
There are a few directors around who I have some excitement about spending my $7 at the theatre watching their movies.
I think you start to prepare the minute you read something.
At this stage, what would be rewarding would be for audiences to want to watch.
Yeah, I had a tremendous time shooting in Nebraska. I like that state a lot, all over it.
I think that I've still not been successful at playing the role of the retired actor, and I'd like to work on that.
The major studios are by and large banks, and they give you what is by and large a loan to make a movie. Like banks, they want their money back plus.
I've always operated under the notion that audiences don't always know when they're being lied to, but that they always know when they're being told the truth.
I don't consider myself specifically political, you know? I think of working as an actor as being a human thing. The concerns I have that fall into politics are human concerns.
I just want real creative freedom without worrying about, you know, car payments.
I am a limousine liberal.
In my teens, I fell in love with the movies.
When I was growing up and somebody like Robert De Niro had a movie come out, it was a cultural event. Because he had such a confidence and a single mission that was so intimate.