The Sean Penn Method of Acting

Never before has an actor been so appropriately ridiculed as Sean Penn was in the movie “Tropic Thunder”.  The writers literally ripped Penn and his comical attempt to win acting accolades with his over-acting masterpiece in “I Am Sam”.  This movie should’ve been called “I Am Trying To Win An Oscar”.  But time and time again, Sean Penn continues to pull off these amazing over-acting “achievements” and yet, other than “Tropic Thunder”, most of the people in Hollywood not only let him get away with it, but they reward with him for his work.

I’ve always judged the caliber of an actor’s performance by posing one question: “if we replaced the actor with another, would the movie suffer for it?”  Cleary, there are many accomplished actors who can indicate “gay” and have pulled it off as good as Sean Penn without taking anything away from the film.  I dare you to ask the same question of “The Wrestler” – your list of actors who could step into that roll in place of Mickey Rourke would be short.  In fact, there wouldn’t be a list.  You can pose these questions for every nominated performance – and inevitably you’ll find yourself assuming all the over-actors as the ones who would be replaceable.  And then there are those actors who could never be replaced.  Just imagine any other actor besides Johnny Depp playing Jack Sparrow.  You can’t.  Johnny Depp is an actor who consumes a character making his work completely irreplaceable.  Johnny Depp is that good.  By contrast, Sean Penn is not. 

So let’s breakdown Sean Penn’s method of acting – since it seems to be paying off for him in spades.  When I was studying acting in New York, we had to do an exercise whereby we had to shift our countenance and posture to assume and consume whatever expression the teacher shouted.  If he said “Angry!” -- then we all had to become angry.  “Drunk!”  We were drunk.  “Sad!”  Yep, we were sad.  But the best part of the exercise came at the end when the teacher shouted “You’re gay!”  In a flash, the twelve master class students suddenly became a dozen Harvey Milks.  Or more accurately, we became a dozen Sean Penns pretending to be Harvey Milk.  Yes, we were that good.  I believe this exercise is Penn’s first step to “creating” his characters – and his first hurdle is making the choice of which command to yell at himself.

But there’s more to his method than making this very first choice.  What else is Sean Penn doing that has many in Hollywood putting our arguably greatest over-actor in the “great actor” category?  What other choices does this actor make to give us all of these unmistakable Sean Penn performances?  I’ve been perplexed by these questions for quite some time, so I set out to study every one of his performances and I believe I have discovered the formula for the Sean Penn method of acting:

Step one:  Try really hard to consume the roll, just like Johnny Depp does.  Repeat to yourself “be like Johnny Depp” over and over again.

Step two:  Throw as much energy as humanly possible into the performance through acting loudly, pounding your fist, and even crying when the scene doesn’t call for crying.

Step three:  Recognize within yourself, without vocalizing, that you’re over-acting – and there’s no way in hell you’ll ever “be like Johnny Depp”.

Step four:  Commit to over-acting with everything you’ve got – and when all else fails, channel your inner-Sally Field.

And the winner is…