Sean Penn is getting candid about his love life and it’s unlikely to impress his exes.
The Hollywood A-lister, advocate and filmmaker has admitted he is not in a serious relationship – something he said he’s “thrilled every day” about.
“I’m just free,” the 63-year-old told The New York Times in a wide-ranging interview.
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“If I’m going to be in a relationship, I’m still going to be free, or I’m not going to be in it, and I’m not going to be hurting. I don’t sense I’ll have my heart broken by romance again.”
The two-time Oscar winner has been in three serious relationships that led to marriage.
First was music icon Madonna, then fellow actress Robin Wright and then Leila George, the Australian actress and daughter of Greta Scacchi and Vincent D’Onofrio.
Penn and Madonna were married from 1985 to 1989.
They met when she was 26, while filming the music video for her hit song Material Girl.
The pair hit it off instantly, and while they reportedly planned to remain casual they married six months after meeting, on the pop Queen’s 27th birthday.
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Madonna filed for divorce in December 1987, but withdrew the papers just two weeks later. She filed them again a year later, in January 1989.
The former couple are said to have remained friends.
The Mystic River star and Wright were wed from 1996 to 2010.
They started dating in 1989 and were married from 1996 until 2010.
In 2014, Wright described her divorce from the I Am Sam actor as “devastating”.
“Divorce in and of itself, and with children, is devastating. Worse than that,” she told The Telegraph.
Since their divorce, the pair have been spotted multiple times meeting up in Los Angeles.
Penn told The TImes he’s learned to repair friendships after divorce.
Though, he said mending wounds is easier when children are not involved.
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“It took Robin and I quite a while. There was a lot of drama.” He added: “Much more important to repair it if there are kids involved, but no easy swing, right?”
He and George married in 2000 after being romantically linked in 2016.
Penn confirmed on Late Night with Seth Meyers that he and George were hitched, in what he said was an intimate “COVID wedding” held via Zoom.
“It was Thursday,” he told Meyers after revealing his wedding band.
“We did a COVID wedding. By that I mean it was a county commissioner on Zoom and we were at the house, my two children and her brother. And we did it that way.”
Penn shares daughter Dylan Frances and son Hopper Jack with Wright.
George filed for divorce after more than a year of marriage.
Penn candidly shared that he once loved drama in a relationship, but if as he’s gotten older if the “trauma gods” visit any feeling of love or romance quickly vanish.
He shared that he’s also experienced a number of unequal relationships.
He described it to The Times as: “The first thing I see in the morning are eyes wondering what I’m going to do to make them happy that day. Rarely reciprocated.”
Penn said his female friends, who he describes as “beautiful, wonderful people”, show him how relationships don’t need to be involve drama or be draining.
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