Interview

Robin Wright Penn’s reputationas a Hollywood turncoat is well-earned. For one thing, she lives in Marin County, near San Francisco, with her two kids—daughter, Dylan, 18, and son, Hopper, 15—and her husband of 13 years (minus time off for a couple of brief sabbaticals), Sean Penn. And for another, her primary commitment over the last decade has been raising her family. That has meant that despite having the sort of deep talent and uncomplicated beauty that could have kept her flush in romantic comedies and Oscar nods for years, Penn has been the prototypical choosy-mom when it comes to picking which parts in which movies she’s going to leave the house to play. Many of those roles have involved quirky, beleaguered wives, mothers, and women on the verge, in films such as Unbreakable (2000), The Pledge (2001, which was directed by her husband), WhiteOleander (2002), A Home at the End of the World (2004), and Breaking and Entering (2006). But more than just her discriminating taste, Penn’s work is the reflection of an informal system of beliefs about acting: that it’s an individualprocess more than a craft; that there’s no room for pretending; and that if you’re going to do it, then you’d better mean it. Penn’s Northern California neighbor, the legendary directorFrancis Ford Coppola, recently spoke to the 43-year-old actress, who appears in the new film State of Play, and who opened up about her earliest (X-rated) cinematic experiences, what it takes to create a (real) character, and the evolution of her eclectic (and uncalculated) career.

Launch Mediaplayer »

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA: So, Robin, I know a little about your family, what you were like as a kid, and where you went to high school—that’s always somehow a telling bit of information. But maybe you could just talk to me a little about how you got interested in this acting and creative stuff.

ROBIN WRIGHT PENN: I think the inception of my interest in arts was when I was around 9 or 10 and I started dancing. I was really convinced that I was going to go to New York and be onstage in A Chorus Line. Then that idea was sort of usurped from my life because we moved to San Diego.

COPPOLA: From where?

PENN: From Los Angeles. And I think it was really destructive, because I’d had this dream for so many years, and suddenly it just vanished and there wasn’t a substitution.

COPPOLA: Were you going to classes or something as a child that couldn’t continue in San Diego?

PENN: Well, it was just the quality of theater, the arts, and the teachers didn’t exist down there. I was in limbo for so long in school. But I had gotten out of regular classes on independent study—I only had to be there about three or four hours a day during most of the later years. So this acting thing was not in the cards—ever.

COPPOLA: Had you participated in school plays?

PENN: Never. No way. Scared the shit out of me.

COPPOLA: Community theater?

PENN: Never, never. I think I always viewed acting as a kind of exhibitionism if you were going to show your heart in that way. And it was unfathomable to me. How could you do that? How could you be that vulnerable with strangers? And yet, what I think it was is that acting seemed verbal, and I’m a very physical, tactile person. I always loved to dance and move. I probably should have been a mime or something like that.

COPPOLA: But it sounds like, as a child, you had a pretty deep impression of acting, if you said, “Oh, this shows my soul!”

PENN: Yeah, but probably because I had been exposed to certain things. I mean, it was just by happenstance that I wound up seeing an Ingmar Bergman film when I was a kid. I think I was at a friend’s house across the street, and her parents were movie buffs. I’d never seen anything like it.

COPPOLA: What film was it? Do you remember?

PENN: I think it was Persona [1966].

COPPOLA: [laughs] Oh, my goodness.

PENN: I remember seeing that at 9 or 10 years of age. Then there were these other weird neighbors who lived in Woodland Hills, this very hippiefied couple. He was a veterinarian—there were always tons of animals in their house. I remember going over just to hang out with his animals and they were watching Deep Throat [1972] with Linda Lovelace and drinking their white wine in the middle of summer . . . I remember they said, “Oh, Robbie, I don’t think you should be watching this. Would your mom let you watch this?” And I said, “Oh, god, yeah, she’d let me watch it.” [laughs] So it was Persona and Deep Throat—I think those were the first film experiences.

COPPOLA: Was it sort of traumatic for you, seeing Deep Throat at 9 years old? I mean, I didn’t understand those things until I was 14 or 15 . . .

PENN: [laughs] I think it brewed inside me for so long. What seeing Deep Throat at the age of 9 instilled in me was this great fear of, Oh, my god, is that what you have to do to be an actress? I mean, those were pretty intense examples of baring one’s soul. You’re like, “Whoa, if that’s what acting is . . .” I don’t think I was putting that together at the time. But later in life . . .