Sean Penn said he skipped this year’s Oscars on purpose, timing a trip to Ukraine so it would overlap with the ceremony. The two-time Oscar winner said he watched from abroad instead of walking another awards-show red carpet, and that the choice was as much about his mental health as his schedule.
He explained the decision Friday at the Tribeca Festival in New York, saying the Academy Awards have long made him uneasy. Penn said award shows have always represented social discomfort for him, and that when he attends large gatherings he can only really tolerate being around a designated group of eight people or fewer. Any bigger than that, he said, becomes anxiety- and dread-inducing.
That is why, even after winning Best Supporting Actor for his role as military colonel Steven J. Lockjaw in One Battle After Another, Penn stayed away from the ceremony. He said he and his One Battle After Another colleagues, along with Warner Bros., knew in advance that he would not be there. Penn added that he had attended the Golden Globes this year and decided then that he could not do award shows, because the best he usually gets from them is relief.
He also turned the usual post-awards social ritual into part of his argument. Penn said people should not do selfies with anyone, at any time, describing those encounters as a bad idea, and then went further with a blunt example about how quickly a simple photo request can become too much. He said award-show nights are built around too many people trying to fit too much into too little time, joking that if someone cuts out two hours for the evening, it gives only 15 minutes per person.
But Penn’s avoidance of the Oscars was not just about the room. He said he really got to enjoy watching the Academy Awards from Ukraine, and that for the first time he was excited while following the ceremony. “Having only felt relief a couple other times, I got to be excited watching the awards,” he said. “I really got to enjoy the Academy Awards for the first time. It was great.”
That trip also fit a pattern. Penn has spent significant time in Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion in 2022, and days after the Oscars it emerged that he had traveled to Europe to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Ukraine’s state rail group, Ukrzaliznytsia, later honored him with an Oscar made from metal taken from a railway car damaged by Russian shelling, turning his absence from Hollywood’s biggest night into a symbol of where his attention has been.
The unanswered piece is not why Penn stayed away. He has made that clear. It is how long he will keep choosing Ukraine and small circles over the Hollywood circuit that once gave him two Oscars, and whether that trade-off now looks permanent rather than temporary.
