Peak sunshine hours in Santa Monica have a way of adorning just about anyone with a superstar sparkle; if it were a filter, it might be called radiant promise, or halcyon slant, with a light shower of citron stars and delicate halo effect. Still, celebrities—the very embodiment of these sunny stars—invariably seem to have one subtle layer of filter lifted from over them; undraped, and crystal clear.
It’s not clear what exactly would cause such an effect; perhaps it’s the constant harsh exposure from paparazzi flashes or stage lights that cause such cracks in the varnish. Or it may be simply the naked vulnerability that choosing to become a performer requires of someone. The process is gradual but noticeable; a veil of mystery and guardedness eventually replacing it. But, for right now, there is only sunny anticipation for Hopper Penn, a young actor, who, despite icily flaxen, champagne-tinted hair peaking out from underneath a worn-in baseball cap and skate-park–ready T-shirt, has something—a distinct yet unplaceable nose, and crystalline arctic gaze—that lends him an opaquely familiar air. There’s an uncanny quality to his presence, at once recognizable and brand new. Though on-camera and red-carpet appearances are just beginning for the actor, it’s not until he’s placed within a Hollywood and familial context that suddenly—of course!—we know that face: his parents are actors Sean Penn and Robin Wright.
The 23-year-old, poetically named after his father’s cherished fellow actors Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson (Jack is his middle name), has a big year, with two upcoming films released in quick succession to finish out 2016. “The Last Face,” a brutal romance between aid workers set in the luscious green jungles and cracked cliffs of civil-war-torn fragments of South Sudan, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, was directed by his father and co-stars Javier Bardem, Penn Sr.’s now ex-fiancee, Charlize Theron, as well as “Blue is the Warmest Color” star Adèle Exarchopoulos. Playing a supporting role in the turbulent film no doubt drew from the Penn family’s extensive tradition of aid work, particularly in the years after Haiti experienced a debilitating earthquake in 2010; father and son (and daughter, and family, and friends) had put in lengthy visits to Port-au-Prince hospitals since initiating the Jenkins/Penn Haitian Relief Organization.
Afterward, the black satire “War Machine,” co-starring Brad Pitt, Topher Grace, and Anthony Michael Hall by “Animal Kingdom” director David Michôd, is to be released by Netflix later this year. Loosely based on Ryan Kealey’s 2012 book “The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan,” the comedy follows Pitt, an unorthodox, four-star Army general leading Marine soldiers—including Penn, the young Private Nick Farrenberg—through the war machine, from radical terrorism in the field to liaising through tangles of politicians and agenda-propping analysts back home after their tour of duty ends. “Shooting that film was probably the best time of my life. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it was the most fun, the most rewarding. Brad Pitt [‘s character] leads our patrol, and all of these soldiers suffer from PTSD,” says Penn. “They’re made to do these things that are not morally right, and live through some messed up stuff.”
We meet on an opal afternoon in an outdoor café on Los Angeles’s westside, in the buoyant sea air and light warmth of the sun, to talk about his early early days in Hollywood and filmmaking. Penn has been acting long before this year, though his past films would have been unlikely breaks: A series of short forms made with friends, whose casual circulation had been limited only to its collaborators. “We made one called ‘Back in the Game,’ that my cousin directed and friend Justin wrote. We wanted to make a psychedelic, artsy movie, and it went completely the opposite way; there was no story to it, but it was still so fun,” he remembers. “We were just messing around, we didn’t show them to anyone or anything like that.” His next short was slightly more professionalized: “I just shot one with Lorraine Nicholson and Stephen Dorff. I’ve ended up doing a lot of shorts; they don’t have a beginning, middle, and end. I wish I had the writing talent to make something like that.” Even “The Last Face” was a serendipitous turn. “At first, I wanted to PA for the film,” says Penn, “But then my dad told me I would be acting in it. It was only then that I really started to pursue acting and started auditioning. Working together brought us so much closer.”
Though he’s been part of a number of formal and informal family appearances over the years, accompanying his parents on the occasional red carpet, as well as modeling with his older sister, Dylan, in Fay’s spring 2016 campaign, he’s now beginning to establish his own acting career. Making its world debut in Cannes this past spring, “The Last Face” set the stage for Hopper Penn’s own premiere—a grand affair that also introduced a creative partnership with the actor and the house of Dior Homme. Exposing a new life of the brand’s traditional menswear—as sharply cut as ever, but now layering in the undeniably beautiful—the line champions new faces of menswear role models; A$AP Rocky is enrobed a ruby overcoat in its current campaign. “They dressed for Cannes and they invited me to their runway show in Paris. I was blown away by the clothes.”
Adjusting to unsolicited scrutiny and media attention has been not without snags. Videos, leaked by paparazzi, have circulated, with scenes ending in spiteful, overheated confrontations. He’s made his apologies, and is setting clearer limits to his privacy now as a result. “It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he reflects on the incident. “I was in the heat of the moment, and all I wanted to do was to hurt this guy following me, and there was police there, so I knew I couldn’t hit him, so I said something really hurtful. But I still regret it. I’ve hurt a lot of friends over the incident, but there’s nothing else to say, because there was no justification for it. I don’t think I had the best teacher for learning to be calm around paparazzi [laughs], but I think my parents do better than I did.” Learning to wade through crashing waves of provocation and the gossip media’s relentlessly piercing public dissection by simply walking down the street are initiation rites into fame trying enough for any rising star, but Penn is pushing himself one level further. He is uprooting from L.A., his lifelong home and support base of his family of industry community to enter into a bruising, exhausting transition particular to many artistic early 20-somethings with a fever of ambition: he’s moving to New York this fall. “I’ll ask my mom for advice sometimes—I want to know how to get rid of that nervous feeling, how do I stop shaking, when I go in to audition. She told me that feeling never really goes away.”
Even in optimal conditions—endless sunshine, creativity and drama in the genes—growing up, as they say, is hard to do.