Sean Penn won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for his turn as a military zealot in Paul Thomas Anderson’s politically charged film “One Battle After Another.”
But he skipped the proceedings on Sunday and headed to Europe, where his plan as of late last week was to visit Ukraine, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.
The people did not specify what he would be doing there or where precisely within the country he would be going. There remained some possibility that although Penn had left the United States by the time of the telecast, his itinerary might have changed.
A representative for Penn declined to comment.
This was the sixth Oscar nomination and third win for Penn, 65, who was a favorite to take home the honor. The other contenders for best supporting actor were Stellan Skarsgard for his self-involved father in “Sentimental Value”; Jacob Elordi for his depiction of the doctor’s monstrous creation in “Frankenstein”; Delroy Lindo as a vampire-fighting blues musician in “Sinners”; and Benicio Del Toro for his portrayal of a karate instructor and revolutionary ally in “One Battle After Another.”
During the ceremony, the presenter for the supporting actor category, Kieran Culkin, said, “Sean Penn couldn’t be here this evening, or didn’t want to, so I’ll be accepting the award on his behalf.”
Penn’s performance garnered him a Golden Globe for best supporting actor in January. That was the start of a run of wins at awards shows like the BAFTAs and the Screen Actors Guild’s Actor Awards. He skipped both of those ceremonies.
Penn has spent significant time in Ukraine since 2022, when he filmed a documentary, “Superpower,” about Russia’s invasion of the country.
His long history with activism has been fortified by his celebrity and propelled by his discomfort with the attention that comes with it.
Penn’s father, Leo Penn, was an actor whose movie career ended in the ’50s when he was blacklisted for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. (He later became a highly successful TV director.)
Penn’s activism — along with his scrapes with the paparazzi — has been public fodder at least since 1985, when he became romantically involved with Madonna, his first wife. According to the 2023 biography “Madonna: A Rebel Life,” Penn tried to help save a close friend of the music star’s by buying H.I.V. drugs in Mexico that had not been approved in the United States. (The friend, Martin Burgoyne, died of AIDS in November 1986.)
In 2002, Penn took out an ad in The Washington Post opposing George W. Bush’s plan to go to war in Iraq. Two months later, he visited Baghdad, where he was quoted saying that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. And when Penn won the Oscar for best actor in 2004 for his role in “Mystic River,” he took to the stage and said, “If there’s one thing actors know, other than that there weren’t any W.M.D.s, it’s that there’s no such thing as best in acting.”
In 2005, Penn operated a rescue boat in New Orleans during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and in 2010 he formed an organization now known as Core, which established a camp in Haiti for more than 50,000 displaced people.
The year before, Penn won his second best actor Oscar, for playing the gay rights activist Harvey Milk. In an acceptance speech in which he acknowledged, “I know how hard I make it to appreciate me,” he went on to criticize “those who voted for the ban against gay marriage,” saying that it was a “good time for them to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes if they continue that way of support.
“We’ve got to have equal rights for everyone,” he continued.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Penn called it the “tip of the spear for the democratic embrace of dreams,” adding, “If we allow it to fight alone, our soul as America is lost.”
He formed a friendship with Zelensky and, during one visit, pulled one of his Oscars out of a duffel bag and gave it to him as a gift. Penn said he could return it when the war was won.
Livia Albeck-Ripka contributed reporting.
Jacob Bernstein reports on power and privilege for the Style section.
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