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Let's just get this out of the way: Sean Penn is the best actor.
We could say "best American actor" or "best actor under age forty-five" or "best actor who was also once married to Madonna," but why not just come out and say it? He's the best. He rules. He is cock of the walk or, as the French say, le coq sportif.
Sure, Russell Crowe briefly warmed the throne and Tom Hanks had that nifty little run a few years back and Ben Kingsley knows his way around a line of dialogue or two. But really: Penn wields the scepter now. His is the brow that wears the crown. He is the king of the castle and the all the others are, in fact, the dirty vassals.
Think of it this way: if evil space aliens came to earth and threatened to destroy our planet unless we could come up with one human who could blow them away with a really great monologue, whom would you vote for?
You know it's Sean Penn. Look at the streak he's on. Every role he does turns to gold. He can play a mentally challenged man. He can play a thug. Most impressively, he can play a jazz guitarist. With a little moustache.
He's nominated for Mystic River this year, but could just as well have been nominated for 21 Grams. He was nominated two years ago for I Am Sam and two years before that for Sweet and Lowdown and four years before that for Dead Man Walking. At this point, his name should just be permanently printed on the ballot.
The weird thing, though, is that he's never actually won an Oscar. Not one. In fact, he's only won one measly Golden Globe -- and he won it this year! Meanwhile, they're giving the damned things out to Jim Carrey!
Granted, when Penn lost out on his Oscars, he lost to Nicolas Cage, Kevin Spacey, and Denzel Washington. And, odds are, this year he'll lose to Bill Murray. These are fine actors all (and, truthfully, we'll be rooting for that crusty badger, Murray), but none of them is the Best Actor of His Generation or, as we call it, BAHG. That's 'cause that's Sean Penn.
Sean Penn is BAHG.
But enough about talent and awards. We all know talent is subjective and awards are meaningless. We're here to talk about something much more substantial and important. We're here to talk about fame. Which, when it comes to Sean Penn, is a tricky thing to figure out.
Because Sean Penn is awfully famous. (He passes the "Have my parents heard of him?" test with ease -- which you can't say about, say, Orlando Bloom or Don Cheadle.) Moreover, even though this year everyone's going ga-ga over his admittedly impressive acting prowess, nearly all of his fame comes not from his skills but from...well, the other things. Like his paparazzi punches. And his marriage to Madonna. And his recent trip to Iraq. And his marriage to Madonna.
True, it's been twenty years or so since he famously TKO'ed that paparazzo, but he still can't shake his image as Hollywood's angriest man. Just a few months back, GQ ran a little blurb titled "38 Things That Will Piss Off Sean Penn This Month."
Not only that, but in his recent run of good work, culminating in this year's golden double whammy, it's easy to forget the many stumbles in his journey from Jeff Spicoli to Jimmy Markum. For example: She's So Lovely. U-Turn. Hurlyburly. Marrying Madonna. That moustache he's currently sporting, which makes him look like a jazz guitarist.
And yet we are inclined to overlook these misfires, in part because he's a really, really damn fine actor. Because he writes and directs interesting films. Because he generally avoids celebrity photo ops and other such crap. Because he has not, to our knowledge, ever appeared with his wife, Robin Wright Penn, on the cover of Redbook magazine.
Because, at the age of forty-three, he seems to know better now than before ever what he's really good at, which is not movies with Demi Moore in them about guys on the lam who pretend to be priests. Rather, it's balls-to-the-wall acting that ideally involves at least two of the following: (a) screaming; (b) bellowing; (c) menacing people; (d) breaking down into shrill sobs; (e) casting a steely stare into the middle distance, then breaking down into shrill sobs.
Plus, he was so good in Sweet and Lowdown, which involved lots of jazz guitar and no shrill sobbing that we can recall.
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