OSCAR WINNER SEAN PENN: A PHOTOGRAPHER AT THE ENDS OF
THE EARTH IN “THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY”
Ben
Stiller’s reimagining of James Thurber’s original story is highly entertaining
and inspiring, revolving around a man who loves to daydream, frequently
retreating into an imaginary world in which he is the hero. A photo editor at LIFE Magazine in New York,
he enjoys his job but longs for passion and excitement. As he was about to lose his job as the
company shifts and downsizes, Mitty finds himself out of his office in no time. The final issue of the prestigious magazine
will soon be on newsstands, but a worried MItty cannot find an important
negative that has mysteriously gone missing.
The
picture was taken by the iconic and elusive photographer Sean O’Connell played
by Sean Penn. Sean is the only one who knows where it is. But where is Sean?
For
all his fantasies of becoming a hero, Walter Mitty has his own very real
hero: the famed LIFE photographer Sean
O’Connell, an elusive adventurer who has become a kind of rock star of the
photographic world, renowned for his relentless commitment to chasing a story
no matter the cost.
It
seemed just the right match to cast Oscar®-winning actor and director Sean Penn
in the role of the mysterious icon who beckons Walter Mitty into the big, wide
open world. “Sean O’Connell is a guy who
represents creative integrity and he had to have this amazing presence that the
audience connects with instantly when Walter finally meets him. That’s why Sean Penn was really my first choice
because Sean embodies all that in life for me,” says Ben Stiller. Stiller was also keen to cast Penn in the
kind of role where one of the leading dramatic actors of a generation wouldn’t
normally be seen. “Sean actually has a
really great sense of humor,” he notes, “which I think doesn’t get showcased
that often in his film work, so it was fun to give him a chance to do something
different.”
Adds
producer Stuart Cornfeld: “Sean
O’Connell has a certain kind of mystique, as does Sean Penn. What was amazing about his performance and
the way the character is written is that when Walter finally does meet Sean,
he's everything that Walter was looking for, but he's also completely different
at the same time. For all of us, Sean
was just amazing to watch in action.”
A
two-time Academy Award winner, Sean Penn has become an American film icon in a
career spanning more than three decades. Penn has been nominated five times for
the Academy Award, as Best Actor for “Dead Man Walking,” “Sweet and Lowdown”
and “I Am Sam,” and won his first Oscar in 2003 for his searing performance in
Clint Eastwood's “Mystic River” and his second Oscar as Best Actor in 2009 for
Gus Van Sant's “Milk.” The performance as gay rights icon Harvey Milk also
garnered Penn Best Actor awards from The Screen Actors Guild (SAG™), New York
Film Critics Circle and Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
As
a journalist, Penn has written for Time, Interview, Rolling Stone and The
Nation magazines. In 2004, Penn wrote a two-part feature in The San Francisco
Chronicle after a second visit to war-torn Iraq. In 2005, he wrote a five-part
feature in the same paper reporting from Iran during the election which led to
the Ahmadinejad regime. Penn's landmark interviews with Venezuelan President
Hugo Chávez and Cuba's President Raul Castro were published in The Nation and The
Huffington Post. Penn's interview with President Castro was his first-ever
interview with an international journalist.
His
humanitarian work found him in New Orleans in the immediate aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina and, more recently, in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. In January
2010, Penn established the J/P Haitian Relief Organization (J/P HRO). J/P HRO
has become a leader in Haiti across multiple sectors, working to improve living
conditions in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps and surrounding
neighborhoods by clearing rubble and providing medical services, education and
enricmment programs, housing construction, and neighborhood redevelopment. J/P
HRO's main objective remains to help displaced people get back to durable,
safer, and permanent homes in revitalized neighborhoods.
Be
a part of a man’s transformational journey in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”
as it hops from the four corners of one’s office to Greenland, Iceland,
Himalayas and ultimately to self-discovery when it opens January 22 in the
Philippines from 20th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.
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