Quotes from Sean Penn

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.

You're always having to live more to fuel something new. It's an obligation to yourself and to the audience. The personal baggage that comes with being a known actor just adds to that struggle.

Somewhere along the line, the actions of this government are the actions of me.

Craft comes into acting later rather than sooner. I was somebody who had to learn through a process - a natural actor doesn't need to.

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 don't have any particular excitement about working with any specific director or actor at this point.

I've never really been one to get what they call stage fright so much.

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.

Sacrificing American soldiers or innocent civilians in an unprecedented preemptive attack on a separate sovereign nation may well prove itself a most temporary medicine.

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.

I cannot tell you that I ever fell in love with the theater as an audience. I fell in love with the theater as an actor for a period of time, but I have struggled as an audience, and I struggle more now than then. I was always a movie guy.

Whatever one considers art to be, there is in many people a hunger to express themselves creatively and to feel authentic in doing that.

A lot of critics sometimes get into analyzing the way actors direct versus non-actors directing. And they really always miss it. It's one of those things where, by not being practitioners, they just came up with something that made sense to them.

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.

It's only in innocence you find any kind of magic, any kind of courage.

I am a limousine liberal.

I've been a road-rat since I got my driver's licence at 16, so I've probably gone across America 20 times.

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.

I lost a friend I was blessed to have. My thoughts are with the family of President Chavez and the people of Venezuela.

Child-rearing is my main interest now. I'm a hands-on father.

I just want real creative freedom without worrying about, you know, car payments.