Sean Penn Passionately Defends His Casting in Hit Film During Rare Interview

Sean Penn has passionately defended portraying a gay man in the acclaimed 2008 movie Milk, amid suggestions that he would never have landed the role today.

The 63-year-old screen star was awarded his second Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of late politician Harvey Milk, who was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California back in the 1970s.

In more recent years since Penn’s turn in Milk, in which he starred opposite James Franco, there have been debates about whether queer roles should be reserved for actors who identify as such.

Penn addressed this when his own role was brought up as he discussed his career during a recent appearance on The Hollywood Reporter‘s Awards Chatter podcast.

“Look, I’m totally on board with any industry—every industry, the movie business as well—confronting the problem of what had been minimal diversity,” he said. “There’s nobody of any gender or any race or any alternate lifestyle that I’m not interested in if they have a story in their heart they want to tell.

“What I know is that the solution is not limiting the casting of Hamlet to Danish princes. And not only is it an attack on imagination that is our bread and butter, but [it] is a demonstration of the unimaginative who would ask it. And I find it culturally offensive and venal and sad that that’s the easy solution for people to have groupthink on and all those defenses.”

“I’ll just pick one movie out of the air when it comes to, you know, more Black actors working,” Penn went on. “Thank God the fight is in them when you see something like Straight Outta Compton. Great movie, great performances.”

After trailing off, Penn continued: “You know, I’m I feel so lucky I got to play Harvey Milk, because guess what, for me as an actor that wasn’t a gay man or a straight man, that was a different personality—and that’s what we’re supposed to be able to do.”

“I don’t know the solution,” the actor concluded. “I don’t know where it’ll go, but I would not be allowed to play that role today. That’s certain.”

Penn, who rarely gives interviews, expressed similar sentiment when he spoke with The New York Times for an article that was published in June.

Arguing that a straight actor playing a queer figure “could not happen in a time like this,” he said: “It’s a time of tremendous overreach. It’s a timid and artless policy toward the human imagination.”

Penn is one of several actors not openly identifying as LGBTQ+ to have won acclaim for taking on such roles. These include Charlize Theron in the 2003 movie Monster, Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game (2014), Cate Blanchett in Carol (2015), Timothée Chalamet in Call Me by Your Name (2017), and Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain (2005).