Last night time’s Oscars may need been superficially fashionable (Ok-pop! Feminine cinematographers profitable issues! Jokes about YouTube interstitial promoting!), however there was one barely charming outdated throwback: Sean Penn wasn’t there to gather his finest supporting actor award.
Positive, this type of factor occurs on a regular basis in different awards exhibits – you’ll be able to barely get by means of a single Baftas with out an A-lister revealing that they didn’t fancy braving the London winter – however not the Oscars. The Oscars are supposed to signify the top {of professional} achievement. It’s your one likelihood to look your whole friends within the eye as one within the information that you’re higher than the lot of them. Who’d flip down a possibility that impossible to resist?
Properly, Sean Penn, that’s who. Final night time, after he opened the envelope and known as out Penn’s title, presenter Kieran Culkin was compelled to apologetically carry the statue offstage himself. The rationale for this, it transpires, is that Penn could have had a previous dedication in Ukraine. After rumours instructed that the actor could have flown out to an undisclosed a part of the nation late final week, he was photographed in central Kyiv on Monday “carrying sun shades and carrying a field of cigarettes”.
It’s a hell of a narrative, one which solely serves to burnish Penn’s repute. The remainder of Hollywood can have their little occasion, yucking it up with Child Yoda and the KPop Demon Hunters, however Penn has no time for such fripperies. He’s concerned with essential world occasions, attempting to maneuver the needle on a problem greater than mere leisure.
This hasn’t occurred for a few years. The final time a winner skipped the Oscars was in 2024, when Hayao Miyazaki couldn’t make it to select up his award for The Boy and the Heron. The excuse given then was that Miyazaki was getting on in age, and he didn’t need to put his physique underneath the stress of a round-the-world flight.
Lacking in Ukraine … Sean Penn pictured on a road in Kyiv on 16 March, the day after the Oscars ceremony. {Photograph}: Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Pictures
However earlier than that, you need to return just a few years to discover a star who couldn’t present up. Except for Woody Allen (who has all the time habitually skipped the ceremony, citing prior commitments together with his jazz band) and Heath Ledger (who died earlier than the ceremony) the final massive winner to skip the awards was Roman Polanski, who failed to show as much as accumulate his finest director statuette for The Pianist. The rationale for this, after all, is that he’s a fugitive who would have been arrested the second he set foot within the nation.
Nonetheless, again within the twentieth century, lacking the Oscars was seen as virtually stylish. In 1936 author Dudley Nichols declined his award as a result of the Academy was engaged in a dispute with the Display screen Writers’ Guild. In 1938, 1945 and 1982 Alice Brady, Joan Crawford and Henry Fonda missed the Oscars attributable to illness or harm. In 1963 Anne Bancroft failed to indicate up as a result of she had a previous stage dedication and, marvel that she was, selected to honour that as a substitute of messing up everybody’s schedule.
After which there are the wilder excuses. In 1971 George C Scott refused his Oscar on the idea that the ceremony was a “meat parade”, whereas in 1987 Paul Newman ducked out as a result of he discovered awards season too exhausting. Marlon Brando famously didn’t attend the Oscars in 1973 in protest at Hollywood’s depiction of Native Individuals, sending Sacheen Littlefeather to reject the award in his place. And Katharine Hepburn failed to indicate up for any of her 4 wins between 1934 and 1982, placing her avoidance right down to a easy case of non-public choice.
My favorite no-show, although, was in 1967 when Elizabeth Taylor received for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and failed to simply accept it in individual. That is rumoured to be as a result of her husband Richard Burton was additionally nominated for his function within the movie, however was anticipated to lose. His paranoia about being publicly declared a loser was so nice that Taylor apparently stayed at residence in solidarity. Maybe unsurprisingly, they divorced one another – twice – inside a decade.
So that is the lineage that Penn now finds himself in. By not exhibiting up on Sunday night time, he had joined a heady league of staunch refuseniks and nonconformists. It’s really fairly cool. Possibly that is the beginning of a brand new motion, and subsequent 12 months different stars will observe his lead and never attend. Hey, something that makes the ceremony shorter is OK by me.
