ONE OPINION AFTER ANOTHER

Two-time Oscar winner Sean Penn has always worn his politics on his sleeve. After gaining a sixth Academy Award nomination for One Battle After Another, the actor tells Newsweek about giving his statuette to Volodymyr Zelensky, how Nicolás Maduro should be in prison and why Donald Trump won in 2024

- BY JENNIFER H. CUNNINGHAM AND H. ALAN SCOTT

WHEN YOU MEET SEAN PENN at his Malibu home, you get the man in his element. Barefoot, with black paint speckled across his hands from an afternoon spent in his carpentry woodshop, the actor settled into his living area with a pack of American Spirit cigarettes and his German shepherd standing guard nearby. There is a raw, grounded quality to the setting, and his decision to go without shoes mirrors his conversational style: stripped of padding and entirely unbuffered. It is a setting that reflects his current philosophy: “I seek to build the frame of the house and have the house really surprise me...if a script is great, you know, that’s a house with music playing.”

Speaking with Newsweek Editor-in-Chief Jennifer H. Cunningham at his home, the two-time Oscar-winner is candid about the “music” of his latest Academy Award-nominated role in One Battle After Another, a project that left him laughing by page 10 of the script. In the Paul Thomas Anderson film, Penn stars as Col. Steven J. Lockjaw, a bigoted officer obsessed with hunting down a Black extremist. After being outmaneuvered once, Lockjaw will stop at nothing to claim his revenge.

But the “visceral reaction” he felt for the script quickly pivots to the “real-world irony” of our current political climate. From the “pathetic, hateful” rise of extremist groups in America to the “deviant, cowardly” betrayal of Ukraine, Penn pulls no punches. Such blunt advocacy is the hallmark of a career defined by merging stardom with a relentless pursuit of accountability, whether it be regarding Iraq, Haiti, Hurricane Katrina or the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He reflects on the “hell” of the awards circuit—viewing his past Oscar wins, for Milk and