Sean Penn’s absence at this year’s Oscars did not go down smoothly, especially as the 65-year-old won Best Actor.
Penn was nominated for his role as Steven Lockjaw in One Battle After Another, and won the award over competitors Stellan Skarsgård, Delroy Lindo, Jacob Elordi, and Benicio del Toro.
“Sean Penn couldn’t be here this evening, or didn’t want to, so I’ll be accepting the award on his behalf,” said award presenter Kieran Culkin.
According to anonymous sources who spoke to The New York Times, Penn planned to travel to Ukraine rather than attend the ceremony. In 2022, Penn gave one of his then-two Oscar statuettes to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “symbol of faith.”
Though Penn did not attend the ceremony, he seemed to be campaigning for the win, and hard, when, just 20 days before the awards, a New York Magazine article revealed that the 65-year-old actor took action in 2013 to address the release of an American businessman who was held in a Bolivian prison for 18 months without being charged. Penn secured his release, the story shared, just in time for Oscar voting.
He’s vocalized his criticism of the awards show before, like at 2024’s Marrakech Film Festival.
“The producers of the Academy have exercised really extraordinary cowardice when it comes to being part of the world of expression and, in fact, have largely been part of limiting the imagination and limiting different cultural expressions,” he said at the time. “I don’t get very excited about what we’ll call the Academy Awards.”
Lindo, a longtime actor with a string of critically-acclaimed performances under his belt and a favorite of director Spike Lee, was nominated for his work in Ryan Coolger’s Sinners on Sunday. He lost the Best Supporting Actor Award to Sean Penn, just after discussing how he got over not being nominated in 2021.
“Frankly, if Da 5 Bloods experience taught me anything, it’s that no Academy Award nomination, no BAFTA nomination, no SAG nomination… There was another one,” Lindo said last year. “There were four of ‘em that completely iced both the film and me… My point is, if so much of the press were saying, ‘This guy’s going to get nominated,’ and it didn’t happen, there’s probably a reason for that.”
He added, “I was profoundly disappointed, frankly.”
Lindo looked just as disappointed as Penn’s name was announced on Sunday.
