Sean Penn Calls Out the Oscars, Slams Academy While Receiving Honor

justjared.com:

Sean Penn is putting the Oscars on blast. The 64-year-old star accused the awards ceremony of “limiting different cultural expressions” while speaking at Marrakech Film Festival where he received a career tribute over the weekend, via Variety. “The Academy have exercised really extraordinary cowardice when it comes to being part of the bigger world of expression, and in fact, have largely been part of limiting the imagination and very limiting of different cultural expressions,” he said at a press conference. Keep reading to find out more… “So I don’t I get very excited about what we’ll call the Academy Awards [except for] when a film like The Florida Project, or I’m Still Here, or, you know, Emilia Perez, of the things that are likely to happen this year,” he said.

He also weighed in on Ali Abbasi‘s The Apprentice, saying “when something sneaks through, it’s to be celebrated.” “It’s jaw-dropping how afraid this business of mavericks is of a great film like that.

One with great, great acting. [It’s amazing] that they too can be as afraid as a piddly little Republican congressman,” he said.

Sean received the lifetime achievement award from Italian actor Valeria Golino at the event. “Around the world [there is] this demand for diversity — but not diversity of behavior and not diversity of opinion or language,” he went on to say. “I would just encourage everybody to be as politically incorrect as their heart desires and to engage diversity and to keep telling those stories, and I’m very proud and happy to be here.