Turns out there’s another reason Sean Penn opted to skip out on this year’s Oscars ceremony: selfies.
Not that Penn is some ghoul who fears having his soul taken by these newfangled camera devices. (That would make for a really great A24 film, FYI.) Rather, as Penn told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins during a Friday event at the Tribeca Festival (via Variety), it’s that selfies are perhaps representative of his larger issues with such massive public events.
“It’s not just [that it’s] an awards show,” Penn explained. “It would be the same if this group was going to an afterparty and one stepped into that. That always represented social discomfort for me; too many people.” Penn added that he feels a certain level of dread and anxiety because these gatherings often “give you 15 minutes per person.”
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Still, Penn’s larger issue also has plenty to do with actual selfies. He only made the decision to skip the Oscars after a somewhat nerve-wracking experience at this year’s Golden Globes. It’s there that he came up with a simple rule: “I’m now down, committed for life, that I won’t go anywhere to be in a designated group beyond eight people.”
Added Penn, “[It’s] the ninth person. And it’s not the low-hanging fruit of ‘I don’t wanna be around all this fake Hollywood’ or something.” From there, Penn said that “people should not do selfies ever with anyone. It’s bad for you; it’s bad for everyone. It’s a soul-sucker. It’s the Holocaust grandmother and her 6-year-old paraplegic wheeling over? It’s a hard no.”
But it’s not all bad news for the six-year-old paraplegic Sean Penn fans. By skipping the Oscars, a move that was ultimately “better for my mental health,” Penn actually got to “enjoy the Academy Awards for the first time. It was great.” He also admitted that winning in years past helped soothe the great anxiety beast. (The same was likely true when he received a mega-rare “Oscar” during his trip to Ukraine, which he took in lieu of attending the Academy Awards.)
“The two times I had gone I felt relief that I’d won because so many people out there had worked really hard for that,” Penn said, adding, “There’s the politics of that stuff.”
At this year’s Oscars, Penn beat out his One Battle After Another co-star Benicio Del Toro, Frakenstein’s Jacob Elordi, Sinners’ Delroy Lindo, and Sentimental Value’s Stellan Skarsgård to win Best Supporting Actor. See the complete winners list and revisit everything that happened during the 2026 Academy Awards by checking out Consequence’s Oscars Live Blog.
Aside from Penn’s big reveal, this year’s Tribeca is packed with premieres and other happenings as the fest celebrates 25 years. That includes the premiere of the AI-generated Iran protest film Dreams of Violets; a 4K restoration of Daft Punk’s Electronica; and Bruce Springsteen receiving the Harry Belafonte Award.
