AWARDS Penn takes a different approach in embracing Hollywood stardom

Penn has skipped the Oscar ceremony in the past.
TORONTO (AP) -- No fan of awards shows, Sean Penn says there's at least one nice thing about receiving an Academy Award: He no longer has to worry about comments like, "Yeah, he's a great actor, but he still hasn't won an Oscar."
"There is a sense of relief" that that's now behind him, Penn said Tuesday of his best-actor win last spring for "Mystic River."
Penn, 44, had been dismissive of Hollywood awards in the past and skipped the Oscar ceremony the three previous times he was nominated. This time, he showed up to collect his prize for "Mystic River" and graciously attended other Hollywood awards events leading up to Oscar night.
In the past, he had been avoiding the long plane flight to get to the Oscars and "some other things that felt unseemly about it to me," Penn told The Associated Press at the Toronto International Film Festival, where his drama "The Assassination of Richard Nixon" was playing.
If he had skipped the Oscars again, "because of what's been going on in the world, it struck me that I would be perceived as taking a stand on something that would be embarrassing to be taking a stand on at this point in the world," he said. "And it's not really been a stand. It's more an allergy to Joan Rivers and all that nonsense. So I went. ...
"But I don't think that there's a private, not that I can grasp onto, moment that you have where you would be feeling anything other than superficial things about it. I don't think you'd go home and say, 'God, I am a great actor,' or 'I really deserved this,' or that it means anything. It means that my mom is thrilled, but ... "
Up next
Penn recently finished shooting "The Interpreter," a thriller set at the United Nations that co-stars Nicole Kidman, and he hopes to begin work late this year on a new version of "All the King's Men," based on the Robert Penn Warren novel. Penn would play the role of politician Willie Stark, a character loosely based on Huey Long, Louisiana's populist "Kingfish" governor. (Broderick Crawford won an Oscar as Stark in the 1949 original, which also won for best picture.)
"The Assassination of Richard Nixon," from first-time director Niels Mueller, features Penn in the real-life story of Sam Bicke, a business failure increasingly embittered and looking for a scapegoat. Against the backdrop of the Watergate scandal in 1974, he settles on President Nixon, the symbol of societal corruption and dishonesty that Sam feels has doomed him to defeat.
Sam decides to try to kill Nixon by hijacking a plane and crashing it into the White House.
Penn had been working with Mueller on the project for years before the Sept. 11 attacks. When the hijacked planes hit the Pentagon and brought down the World Trade Center towers, Bicke's story became more relevant, said Penn, a harsh critic of President Bush.
"It's interesting that the Secret Service, the FBI and the CIA all did case studies on this particular case, and yet the national security adviser gets up after Sept. 11 and says, 'Who would have thought?'" Penn said.