Sean Penn has described meeting “creepy little bully” Vladimir Putin with Jack Nicholson.
Penn visited Ukraine last February to film a documentary about the Russian invasion of the country, which began a year ago yesterday (February 24, 2022). In a statement released by the Office of the President of the Ukraine at the time, it read: “The director specifically came to Kyiv to record all the events that are currently happening in Ukraine and to tell the world the truth about Russia’s invasion of our country.”
In a new interview, Penn recalled how he and Nicholson met the dictator at the 2001 Moscow Film Festival, where Penn’s film The Pledge was premiering.
Revealing that the pair travelled with Putin to Russian filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov’s estate, Penn told The Independent: “We were put in a convoy. We knew that Putin was going to be the honoured guest.
“In the nature of that time and space, we accepted the invitation. We got in this convoy. And we were going as fast as they wanted to drive, with no care for whether it might have presented danger in the villages we drove through. When farmers with pony-driven carts were trying to come across, the security people in our vehicles would lean out the window to baton them away. It was so needlessly aggressive.”
Calling him a “creepy little bully,” Penn said that the experience gave him a “cold, ugly feeling” about Putin’s rule in Russia.
Last September, Penn and Ben Stiller were among 25 more US citizens to be banned from entering Russia permanently by the country’s government.
In a post on the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry’s website, the personal sanctions are said to be in response to US sanctions against Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
A translated statement reads: “In response to the ever-expanding personal sanctions on Russian citizens by Joe Biden’s administration, a permanent ban to enter the Russian Federation has been imposed on another group of US Congress members, high-ranking officials, members of the business and expert community and cultural figures.”
Both Stiller and Penn have shown support for Ukraine amid the country’s ongoing war with Russia. In June, Stiller, a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and also visited occupied settlements in Kyiv.
Later last year, Penn handed one of his Oscars to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a trip to Kyiv.
As shown in a video on Zelenskyy’s Instagram (November 8), Penn tells him: “This is for you. It’s just a symbolic silly thing, but if I know this is here I’ll feel better and strong enough for the fights.
“When you win, bring it back to Malibu, because I’ll feel much better knowing there’s a piece of me here.”
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