After skipping two important precursor ceremonies, Sean Penn may not show up to the Oscars. Let’s hope he does — so that audiences don’t lose out on his brand of chaos.
Penn, nominated for his villainous performance in “One Battle After Another,” smoked cigarettes on camera at the Golden Globes before losing best supporting actor to “Sentimental Value’s” Stellan Skarsgård. Then, Penn went on a winning streak he was not present to glower through: He won the Actor Award and the BAFTA in absentia. Given that he skipped three of five Oscar ceremonies as a nominee — and that he has publicly mused about melting down his Oscars to make bullets for the Ukrainian war effort — it seems likely that he won’t go to the Dolby Theatre, though this wasn’t confirmed as of press time. This possibility is a blow to history and to the cause of good TV.
Decades ago, winners used to skip the ceremony for all manner of reasons. But these days, every living nominee who is physically able makes it to the show. When, during the COVID-affected 2021 ceremony, best actor winner Anthony Hopkins was unable to make the journey, it deprived trivia junkies — the Oscars’ core constituency — of a speech to add to the history books, and of a picture of “the winning four” that’s become an Oscars mainstay. An end-of-night picture of (let’s just say) Jessie Buckley, Michael B. Jordan and Teyana Taylor clinking their Oscars together will feel like a three-legged table. Something will be missing!
And Penn provides much more than “something.” While he skipped the Oscars for his first three nominations, Penn had a certain ESP that he ought to show up for his two wins, for “Mystic River” and “Milk.” For his first Oscar, Penn peppered sarcastic political commentary into an expression of humility, declaring, “If there’s one thing that actors know — other than that there weren’t any WMDs — it’s that there is no such thing as ‘best’ in acting.” He went on to charmingly wing it, given that, as he told the audience, his kids saw prewriting a speech as “presumptuous and embarrassing.”
Winning his second Oscar for playing gay activist Harvey Milk, Penn showed his best side, expressing hope that those who’d voted for California’s recently passed gay marriage ban would consider their legacy and change their hearts. He closed his speech with a message of support for the nominee who’d been seen as the odds-on favorite, saying, “Despite a sensitivity that sometimes has brought enormous challenge, Mickey Rourke rises again and he is my brother.” This was classic Penn: someone possessed of (and by) strong passions but also thoughtful, eloquent and politically committed. Perhaps Penn might be in this mood accepting a “One Battle” Oscar!
Or perhaps he might be in his other mood, which deserves airing too. The way Penn presented the best picture Oscar to “Birdman” — making an off-color joke, using profanity, about the Mexican heritage of director and past Penn collaborator Alejandro González Iñárritu (who at least played along) — was unfortunate. But before the joke fell flat, Penn was in fine form. He opened the envelope, silently read the name and nodded ponderously for long moments, stretching out the “Birdman”-versus-“Boyhood” drama for one more beat. Penn’s other memorable presenting gig came the year after his first win, when, presenting best actress, he took issue with a monologue joke from host Chris Rock. The emcee had made light of the sudden omnipresence of Jude Law. “I did want to answer our host’s question about who Jude Law is,” Penn intoned. “He’s one of our finest actors.”
With decades of retrospect, we can say that this moment is sweetly intended, and funny, in the way that actorly self-seriousness can be. It’s definitely not the worst way a famous actor has responded to a joke Chris Rock told at the Oscars! And it’s proof of Penn’s live-wire unpredictability. Were he to accept an Oscar, Penn might speak movingly about how “One Battle After Another” depicts the generational struggle to build a better world. He might call Conan O’Brien unserious or Skype Volodymyr Zelenskyy from the stage. The point is that we don’t know.
And this not-knowing has been a theme of an unsettled awards season, one in which three of the four acting races appear wide open, and all feature potential for live-TV excitement. In best supporting actress, a potential winner, Amy Madigan, is widely remembered, still, for refusing to join in the applause for 1999 lifetime achievement award winner Elia Kazan over his having “named names” during the McCarthy era. Don’t you want to see what she’d say onstage? Meanwhile, the best actor field features one of the loosest stars of his generation. Much has been made of the idea that Timothée Chalamet is the heir to fellow nominee Leonardo DiCaprio. But from a certain angle, Chalamet looks like Penn, too, with his utter earnestness about acting and his instinct for misstatements. Even devotees of ballet and opera might concede that this Oscar season would have been duller without Chalamet in it.
The same is true of Penn. His campaign, which included a stop at Variety’s Actors on Actors, featured both his depth and his kookiness, before it got cut short. Penn doesn’t need another Oscar. He doesn’t care about the two he has! But if they’re going to be bolstered by viral moments with enough weight that fans still remember them years later, the Oscars might need Sean Penn.
