{"id":349386,"date":"2026-03-16T18:17:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T18:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/349386\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T18:17:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T18:17:10","slug":"sean-penn-ghosted-the-2026-oscars-heres-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/349386\/","title":{"rendered":"Sean Penn Ghosted the 2026 Oscars. Here\u2019s Why"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Thomas Anderson<\/a>\u2019s One Battle After Another scored the Best Picture Oscar at Sunday\u2019s 2026 Oscar ceremony, after Sean Penn set the tone for a One Battle triumph with a win for Best Supporting Actor earlier in the night. Anderson took home Best Director as well as Best Screenplay, which he dedicated to his kids (\u201cTo say sorry,\u201d he said, \u201cfor the housekeeping mess that we left in this world we\u2019re handing off to them, but also with the encouragement that they will be the generation that hopefully brings us some common sense and decency.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Anderson’s One Battle antagonist Sean Penn<\/a>, a two-time winner and six-time nominee before tonight, has been known to liven up an Oscar telecast with a zinger or two\u2014when he won for Mystic River in 2004, his speech began, \u201cIf there\u2019s one thing that actors know, other than that there weren\u2019t any WMDs,\u201d but as of last week Penn had missed several precursor ceremonies, including the BAFTAs and the Actor Awards, despite winning at both. He went into Sunday night a likely winner but also a likely no-show.<\/p>\n

Read on to learn whether Penn, Brad Pitt, Connor Storrie, and other stars made it to the Academy Awards this year.<\/p>\n

Was Sean Penn at the Oscars?\"Sean<\/p>\n

Warner Bros.\/Everett Collection<\/p>\n

No; while Sean Penn won Best Supporting Actor at Sunday’s Oscars ceremony for his performance as the corrupt military leader Col. Steven J. Lockjaw, the One Battle After Another actor wasn\u2019t present at the show. Instead, according to the New York Times<\/a>, the actor headed to Europe, en route to Ukraine. The purpose of his visit remains unknown, but in 2022, during a previous visit to Ukraine, the actor gave President Volodymyr Zelenskyy one of his Oscars, after suggesting to Variety that they could be \u201cmelted down to bullets<\/a>\u201d to help with the Ukrainian war effort.<\/p>\n

Penn famously does not think highly of the Academy, who he accused in 2024 of exhibiting \u201cextraordinary cowardice when it comes to being part of the bigger world of expression, and in fact, have largely been part of limiting the imagination and very limiting of different cultural expressions.\u201d And in 2023 Penn blasted the producers of the ceremony for refusing to let him speak after the Ukraine invasion: \u201cThe Oscars producer thought, \u2018Oh, he\u2019s not light-hearted enough.\u2019 Well, guess what you got instead? Will Smith!\u201d<\/p>\n

Not to be out-zinged, Kieran Culkin, who presented the absent Penn with his award, said that Penn \u201ccouldn\u2019t be here this evening, or didn\u2019t want to,\u201d before accepting on Penn\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s One Battle After Another scored the Best Picture Oscar at Sunday\u2019s 2026 Oscar ceremony, after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[17940,321,269,93,61,60,2625,11514,514],"class_list":["post-349386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-brad-pitt","tag-celebrities","tag-culture","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-oscars","tag-textbelowcenterfullbleed","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}