Sean Penn skipped the Oscars because of selfie culture: “It’s a soul-sucker”
Sean Penn has explained that his disdain for awards shows derives from selfie culture, which he strongly stands against.
2026 was a year to remember for Penn at awards ceremonies, if he was only in attendance to pick up his gongs.
For his performance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, Penn won the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ at the Oscars and the Baftas, but skipped both ceremonies.
In January, he did attend the Golden Globes, but seemingly had such an unenjoyable experience due to being asked for selfies, which put him off turning up at any other ceremonies throughout awards season.
Penn made the comments to the CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins on June 5th at the Tribeca Film Festival, sharing, “People should not do selfies ever with anyone. It’s bad for you; it’s bad for everyone. It’s a soul-sucker.”
It doesn’t matter who you are, Penn isn’t interested in selfies, adding, “It’s the Holocaust grandmother and her 6-year-old paraplegic wheeling over? It’s a hard no.”
He then opened up about the Golden Globes, explaining,” I’d never been to that before. And that’s where I decided, ‘I can’t do this’.”
The triple Oscar-winner then slammed the Academy Awards as being “not just an awards show”, before elaborating, “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’s anti-awards show stance isn’t set to change anytime soon either, stating (via Variety), “I’m now down, committed for life, that I won’t go anywhere to be in a designated group beyond eight people.”
The actor explained that he finds large groups of people to be anxiety-triggering, as well as “dread-provoking”.
He did check with his One Battle After Another colleagues that it was OK for him to skip the Oscars, who gave him their blessing. Instead, he visited Ukraine and watched the ceremony on television, which he said was “great”, and revealed, “I really got to enjoy the Academy Awards for the first time.”
Similarly, Paul McCartney recently spoke out about his resistance to selfie culture, which he said is “radical these days”.
McCartney also shared the story that he tells fans who are upset by his decision to refuse photos, revealing, “So I say to people: I don’t want to do photos. And they say: ‘Why?’ And I say: ‘I’ll tell you what…’ – and I go into this long explanation about how, down on the south coast of France in Saint-Tropez, there’s a man on the beachfront who has a monkey, and you pay to have your photo taken with the monkey. I really do not want to feel like that monkey.”
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