Q: You’d been disillusioned with acting for the better part of 15 years. What was the depression about?
SP: or a long time I gauged the value that a film would have on a good script, a good cast, a good director and a subject that I would want to go see a movie about. Those things were enough for a while. You get older, and you get more aware of the sacrifices. It’s about time, which we don’t get more of. It’s not enough to work with people you respect and like. You want the same thing you find in family. You want to be with people you love, and it wasn’t since Gus Van Sant’s movie “Milk” that I’d had that feeling. So I kept taking these jobs that I thought were good jobs about good subjects with good directors and I was missing my family, my dog, and I said, What the [expletive] am I doing here? I felt like, maybe I’m done with all this. […]
Q: We talked about how in the recent past you struggled with motivation about acting, and also how you can feel a lot of anger at the world. So what gets you up in the morning these days?
SP: I’m not averse to feeling extremely frustrated with the world. “The world”: We know what we’re saying, I think; I don’t want to be grandiose, or I don’t know how not to be. But I don’t even know if I would call what Russia and Putin are up to right now something that I engage in a lot of rage about. I don’t need rage to get me to a clarity of knowing how evil and obscene it is. The frustration is with those who are not willing to be sober enough to recognize our sacred duty to support the defense of Ukraine. But I don’t even call that anger so much. [Penn points to one eye] I wake up every day with this eye clear about the threat to the environment, the anguish people are going through, attempts to figure out how I can be of any value-added. [Penn points to his other eye] And this one is driving me from the time I wake up, and all I see is that this is still a magic trick of a beautiful cosmos and I am gonna [expletive] enjoy it every day — and I do. Sorry to those who would have me do otherwise, but I am feeling great.
— Sean Penn, from Interview by David Marchese: Sean Penn Let Himself Get Away With Things for 15 Years. Not Anymore.” (NY Times, Sept 27, 2025)
Notes:
- Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
I’m absolutely 100% with SP. Apart from the fact that his liberal use of expletives….
As someone of a certain age too I have learned (late but still…) to not have too high expectations, to be more understanding and forgiving but also to protect myself of the many evils of our time. Maybe some of us could learn that lesson earlier than he and I did? I fell SO much better since I can let things (sometimes) rush off my backside and not (par)take in them, IF I can’t do anything about it. It’s liberating.
Oh to reach your heights Kiki and linger where you stand for a moment! 🙂 Have a good day.
Do I sound a bitch or know-better? that was so not my idea…. sorry! I fully know that I’m still as far as you can think from what I’d like to be but I’m on a steep learning curve ever since I started realising what Pence voiced was also ‘my way’.
Not at all. I found it enlightening!
He’s a complex person.
He is!
I think we all go through stages in life and at some point we learn that we can’t change it all by being angry about everything, though it doesn’t mean we agree or accept everything, it just is and everything, no matter how good or bad, is temporary.
Well said Beth. And agree. I’m not there yet but at least see the need to get there. It’s a start.
We’re in a liminal space — millions of us, globally. It is baffling, for it seems we can affect so little so minimally. Fortunately, I can’t shake one Internet-found encouragement: “We are all just walking each other home.” That is certainly true of your ‘blog, DK!
Awwwww. Thank you! We are exactly in the space you describe!!!!