Madonna in Sean Penn’s official Biography
The race for the US rights to the first authorised biography of Sean Penn has been won by Scottish publisher Canongate.
Known for his reluctance to discuss his personal life, including four years of marriage to Madonna, Penn has been persuaded to tell his life story in a series of detailed interviews.
The biography, Sean Penn: His Life And Times, includes anecdotes from 75 of his friends and family including his mother Eileen Ryan, Anjelica Huston, Jack Nicholson, Woody Allen and, in one of his last interviews, the late Marlon Brando.
It will reveal Penn’s strong feelings about press intrusion into his relationship with Madonna; his desire to be political and speak out against the war in Iraq; and his bitterness at the treatment of his father Leo, a decorated second world war veteran who was banned from acting in Hollywood after being suspected of communist tendencies in the 1950s.
The “oral history” has been written by Richard T Kelly, an Irish author and former consultant to the Edinburgh International Film Festival, who met Penn when he invited teh actor to screen his film The Pledge and give a masterclass interview at the festival in 2001.
The book, which will be published in the UK by Faber in October, is expected to be one of the top-selling titles of the year, with a major serialisation deal in discussion. Canongate have snapped up the American rights for January 2005.
Kelly, a lifelong fan, said the book would surprise readers by showing them a different character from Penn’s moody, controversial reputation.
“What might surprise people is that he is seen as tight-lipped and reticent, but is actually funny and very open”, he said. “He is quite a raconteur, but he also stands for a great tradition of acting.”
The 43-year-old is notorious too for his past of heavy drinking, bar brawls , time in jail and antics such as firing a rifle at journalists in helicopters attempting to film his wedding to Madonna.
That marriage ended in 1989 and he subsequently married the actress Robin Wright, with whom he has had two children. But although his private life became more quiet and sober, he caused controversy in the US with two visits to Iraq and vehement anti-war comments, for which, he claimed, he was frozen out of one film project.
In an interview in Time magazine last year he said: “There are incredible holes in the plot [of the war in Iraq]. The casting’s terrible. This guy who is playing Donald Rumsfeld should be doing dinner theatre. It’s a really poorly thought-out movie, and it’s killing people.”
He feels actors have a duty to follow their principles. “He has made it clear that being an actor doesn’t disqualify you from being a citizen, although a celebrity who dares speak his mind gets a hiding from the press”, said Kelly.
The book traces Penn’s life from his birth in Santa Monica, California, to a childhood of creating Super-8 amateur films with friends Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen and Rob Lowe.
It also reveals that Penn is keen to avoid films that would compromise quality and cater to what he has called the “comfort-addicted audience”. One notable exception is the critically panned Shanghai Surprise, filmed with his then wife Madonna.
Article by Senay Boztas, Arts Correspondent
Source: sundayherald.com