Actor

Following his extraordinary performance as Matthew Poncelet, a convicted murderer waiting execution in Tim Robbins’ Dead Man Walking, Sean Penn’s latest project, a film biography of Brendan Behan entitled The Bells of Hell, began shooting this February. Penn has been tipped to play Behan for many years and physically bears an uncanny likeness to Behan in his younger days. Co-written by Peter Sheridan and his brother Jim, director of My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father, the film will be Peter Sheridan’s directorial debut. 

A recent (and rare) TV appearance by Penn on PBS’s Charlie Rose Show found him still hesitant to go back to acting full-time, as he prefers to direct. He said he would return only for select parts. Two weeks after receiving the script for Dead Man Walking, Penn was on board. “When I got to the end of that script, it had touched me so deeply. You know when you’re touched like that, and your tears are falling on the page of the script, that this is something you’ve got to do.” 

“Sean Penn is amazing,” said Tim Robbins. “He was the first and only person I went to. I wanted to see him in this role.”