Sean Penn won’t be attending award shows anytime in the near future. The three-time Oscar winner revealed to CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins that he finds any social gathering of more than eight people to be “anxiety and dread-provoking” at a Tribeca Festival storytelling event on Friday. He came to this determination after attending the 2026 Golden Globe Awards in January, which prompting his absence from the Oscars, where he won his third statuette for One Battle After Another.
“An award show … always represented social discomfort for me. It’s too many people,” he told Collins. “I’m now committed for life. I won’t go anywhere to be with a designated group beyond eight people. If you cut out two hours for your night, it gives you 15 minutes per person. More is just anxiety and dread-provoking. I went to the Golden Globes. I’d never been to that before, and that’s where I decided I can’t do this.”
“It’s not the low-hanging fruit of ‘I don’t want to be around all this fake Hollywood stuff,’” he continued. “It’s the opposite. It’s the old friend you haven’t seen that you see across the room. You make a hand gesture. ‘We’ll catch up before the night’s out because someone’s in your ear.’ Then you don’t because you’re running to the back door by the end.”
Awards lovers will, of course, remember the image of Penn smoking indoors during the 2026 Golden Globes that took the internet by storm. Collins opened up the hour-long discussion at Spring Studios in Tribeca with a joke about that image.
“Normally when I’m interviewing people, they are uncomfortable,” Collins said. “But I would like for you to be comfortable while we’re on stage here together. While I was doing my research for this, I noticed you have been smoking indoors a lot lately, so I brought you something.”
Collins then presented Penn with a yellow pack of American Spirit cigarettes, which got a chuckle out of both Penn and the audience.
Rather than attend the 2026 Oscar ceremony, Penn headed to Ukraine, a country he’s visited several times since 2021, and where he also filmed part of his 2023 documentary Superpower. Penn said while attending the Oscars in 2004 and 2009 — where he won Best Actor for Mystic River and Milk, respectively — that all he felt was “relief” when he won because he knew how many people had worked hard to earn him the win.
“Just to be clear,” Collins commented, “You wanted to avoid the awards party scene so much, you went to a war zone.”
Penn said that he had spoken with director Paul Thomas Anderson, his fellow cast members, and Warner Bros. executives before making his plan and that “they felt it was better for [his] mental health” not to attend. Instead, he watched the Oscars live at 2 a.m. in Ukraine.
“Having only felt relief the couple other times, I got to be excited watching the awards,” Penn said about this year’s festivities. “That it kept being Paul’s movie through the night, that pace of it, I really got to enjoy the Academy Awards for the first time.”
Later in his talk with Collins, Penn shared that he’d first read the One Battle After Another script completely naked. Anderson had sent over the script, but Penn had been busy for two days without a chance to read it.
“That third night, at about one in the morning, I took a shower, and I placed the script on one of those skinny tables in a hallway outside, I don’t know what they’re called,” he remembers. “I thought, ‘I’m just going to read the first three pages,’ so I came out of the shower, almost grabbed a towel, but saw the script open up.”
Penn said he started giggling with excitement by the eighth page and knew he’d sign onto the project at that point, but sat down in the hall and kept reading, still naked.
“At some point, I became aware that it was also funny to me that I was naked,” he said, “So I thought I’d just stay with the joke that was working.”
During the hour-long conversation, Collins and Penn also discussed Penn’s recent enthusiasm for carpentry, his love of the Ukrainian people, and his hatred for taking selfies.
“People should not do selfies ever with anyone,” Penn said. “It’s bad for you. It’s bad for everyone. It’s bad for your soul.”
When Collins clarified with, “So you say no to selfies when people ask?”
Penn responded, “It’s a hard no. It’s the Holocaust grandmother and her 6-year-old paraplegic wheeling over. It’s a hard no for everybody.”
Towards the end of the fun and free-wheeling hour, Collins asked Penn if he’d mellowed out some in recent years, to which Penn responded that he’d woke up four years ago, and “suddenly everything got balanced.” That he’d finally become able to experience both the tragedies and joys of life in equal portions.
“Also, I haven’t had a yelling match with anybody in four years,” Penn said, smiling.
