She balances blockbuster success with independent art; award-winning silver screen turns with full-time motherhood; a high-profile marriage with fiercely protected privacy. She’s a strikingly pretty actor who shuns Hollywood’s off-screen glamour – opting for dressed-down interviews, minimal makeup and a home away from the bright lights of LA. Robin Wright (Penn is her married name) was born in Texas, but traveled about the United States with her sales director mom until a desire to travel to Europe brought before-camera experience in the form of the modeling gigs that financed the trip. The engaging and talented teen returned from overseas to land a role in the television soap opera Santa Barbara before debuting on the big screen, at age 20, in Hollywood Vice Squad (1986) and taking on the title role in the enduring cult hit fairytale, The Princess Bride (1987).
Deciding early to avoid “princess” typecasting, the actor spent a few years opting only for independents – Loon (1989), State of Grace (1990), Denial (1991), The Playboys (1992), Toys (1992) – until allowing herself to be lured back to the big-time to play the troubled Jenny in the hugely successful Forrest Gump (1994). The next year she sampled the action genre with The Crossing Guard, then tried a period piece, starring as Defoe’s fallen Moll Flanders in 1996. For Loved (1997), Wright Penn netted an Independent Spirit Award nomination and the Seattle Film Festival’s Best Actress award. For the same year’s She’s So Lovely, she was nominated for a Screen Actor’s Guild award. Hurlyburly (1998), the commercially successful Message In A Bottle (1999), Unbreakable (2000) and The Pledge (2001) followed.
Off-screen, the actor was married briefly, in 1986, to fellow actor Dane Witherspoon, and, ten years later, married another co-star, actor Sean Penn. Wright Penn and Penn have two children. Coverage of that 1996 wedding led the couple to speak out against an invasive paparazzi, and the downside of Los Angeles living – in their case being robbed of the family car at gunpoint – drove the Penns to a decision to commute from a home away from Hollywood. As to “popularity,” Wright Penn is beloved of webfans, and an honest and articulate interviewee, but disappoints celebrity magazines by dressing inconspicuously enough to avoid both the best-dressed and worst-dressed lists (quite a Hollywood feat in itself).
Upcoming are How To Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog and Just To Be Together. Beautiful and unpredictable, tough but willing to present vulnerability, Wright Penn relies very little on the trappings of Hollywood. She reaches out with her performances – and fans and critics, alike, are grateful
