Sean Penn

Two institutions rewarded the same work in 1996: the Berlinale gave Sean Penn a Silver Bear for Dead Man Walking, directed by Tim Robbins, and Independent Spirit gave him its male lead award for the same film. Spirit put him on the nominee list twice more and the award went elsewhere on both occasions, once for Milk, from 2008, and once for a film the catalogue does not hold. His directing appears through another institution altogether: the Italian academy nominated Into the Wild, from 2007, in its foreign film category the year after, and because that entry opens to the film he stands in it as the director. The French academy gave him an honorary César in 2015. One notice in the British Film Institute archive counts him the most talented and committed American film actor of his generation as well as a brilliant writer-director, and holds that the work of Rabe finds a deep answer in him, calling him impressive in Casualties of War, for which Rabe wrote the screenplay.