Sean Penn

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.

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 can always see light in any situation. It's just the way I'm made.

I really love to make movies.

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

There's not a lot of good movies being made.

On any movie I'm involved with, I say what I think.

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

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

There are a few directors around who I have some excitement about spending my $7 at the theatre watching their movies.

I live in the energy and rhythm of the character. To some degree, that's true of every actor I've worked with.

Yeah, I had a tremendous time shooting in Nebraska. I like that state a lot, all over it.

When I buy a Nikon camera, I have no tolerance for the instructions. I'm ready to make some mistakes using it and get some bad pictures back until I've figured it out for myself.

The thing that's very close in the process is writing and acting, not directing. Directing's very different.

Yeah, I had actually tried to stop acting before I made Dead Man Walking.

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

I like to believe that love is a reciprocal thing, that it can't really be felt, truly, by one.

If there's anything disgusting in the movie business, it is the whoredom of my peers.

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'm not a breakfast eater.

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

There is no shame in my saying that we all want to be loved by someone. As I look back over my life in romance, I don't feel I've ever had that.

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

I'm always frustrated when somebody makes a movie out of a book and they leave the book behind, or the heart of it.

I'm a huge Woody Allen fan. Good movie, bad movie, it doesn't matter - I just like his movies.

You try to do your best at what you're getting paid for.

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.

At this stage, what would be rewarding would be for audiences to want to watch.

There is no re-inventing the wheel.

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'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.

The bottom line is, you love your wife, you do your best with that.

Selling a movie feels like a hustle to every bone in my body. Many actors have careers dominated by modeling. They're all over the place. It turns me off. People who are good at what they do ought to practice something bigger.

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 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 think life's an irrational obsession.

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.

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.

I love acting, truly my favorite people are actors.

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's a lot of mediocrity being celebrated, and a lot of wonderful stuff being ignored or discouraged.

I am a limousine liberal.

Marriage ain't easy, but it's great most of the time.

In school, I was a genius of the year preceding the year I was in, every year.

That on a romantic level, if you feel it about somebody and it's pure, it means that they do too.

In between, I go broke because I seem to do movies where you're not paid a lot as an actor.

Oh, I'm a big-mouth. I said a lot of things.

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.

Anger can be a problem, but it has tremendous potential, too. It's just figuring out what to do with it.

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.

When you act in a film, you're inevitably surrounded by people you didn't choose, right down to the set painter. I like being able to pick the family I'm waking up to in the morning that's going to make this group effort to tell a story that applies to what's interesting to me at that stage in my life.

So if we have anything original to offer, it's to speak from our own life about the society we're in.

I think you start to prepare the minute you read something.

If you're willing to put two thoughts into a picture then you're already ahead of the game.

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.

My favorite thing to do is not act - it's that simple.

Turning one's back on stardom might be the highest form of common sense. One that I would aspire to be more complete with.