Robin Wright Penn

Being married to Sean Penn can’t be easy. But it doesn’t seem to be that easy to get un-married from him either. Sean and Robin Wright Penn have just announced their divorce – for the second time in 16 months. Whether it will be finalised this time is anyone’s guess, but three weeks before the announcement, when this interview took place, they were, as the interview reveals, still very much together.

Their relationship has been a long and turbulent one – they first met in 1989 shortly after Penn’s divorce from Madonna – and have been together ever since, with occasional highly publicised bust-ups. The first time divorce was officially mentioned was in December 2007, when they issued a statement confirming that they were finally ending their 13-year marriage, only to call the whole thing off four months later.

Cracks started to appear again in February this year when Penn collected his best actor Oscar, and graciously thanked the usual long list of people – without mentioning his wife. But when this interview with Wright took place in mid April, just after her forty-third birthday, she spoke openly about their relationship, reconciliation and family life, with no hint of new storm clouds gathering. When Sean filed for divorce for the second time a couple of weeks later, it’s hard not to wonder if she was as surprised as we were.

Next to her high-profile husband, Wright has always seemed much quieter, low key and below the radar (which is how she likes it). She’s also chosen her acting roles carefully over the past 15 years to focus on parenting the two children she has with Penn: Dylan, now 18, and Hopper, 16.

But don’t let that wife-and-mother-in-the-background act fool you. In person, Wright is bright and just as passionate, articulate and politically engaged as her husband. It’s easy to see why they’ve stayed together so long.

She deliberately avoids the limelight, but her marriage is more public than she is, which distorts perceptions of her, and makes it easy to overlook not just her achievements but her skills as an actor. Never a flashy performer, she has matured into a powerful screen presence. Her latest role – as a devoted but repressed wife in The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee, is a masterclass in emotional undercurrents and inner conflict. It’s a quiet performance that packs a powerful punch – you’re left thinking about her character for days.

I caught up with her in a happy mood after celebrating her birthday with her family, and shyly receiving compliments for her portrayal of Pippa Lee, something she would have struggled to do before. ‘I’ve always had a problem with confidence around my work,’ she says. ‘I was hard on myself for a long time. The best thing about birthdays these days is that feeling of finally being able to relax and let go.’ While she protects her privacy, she is also direct and honest and talked frankly about her marriage, her hopes and the low self- esteem that haunted her early life.

Interview

What do you think of the choice your character Pippa Lee makes, to devote herself so completely to her husband and family?

I think she had to do it to survive. It’s the deal she makes. She’s a wild girl, from a damaged background, and she sees her marriage as a way to escape that. In return she buries that wild girl and devotes herself completely to her husband’s needs and becomes his muse.

It saves her in one way, but when we see her in the film, she’s suffocating. She’s suppressed her real self for too long.

Yes, she’s starting to resurface, to feel her own force and power as a human being.

There’s a scene I really like in the film, where you’re having lunch with Winona Ryder’s character and you look around the restaurant and say, ‘We could be married to any of the men in this room. It’s not love that makes a marriage. You have to will it.’

I thought that was genius. Because it’s all about the work in marriage, and we don’t get to see that very often. I don’t see that as a cynical line, I see it as very true and very beautiful. She’s saying you have to be willing to do what it takes, that love on it’s own won’t be enough.

You’ve been married for a long time, so you understand that. What is the work we have to do to make a marriage last – how would you describe it?

I think the key is real, honest communication without defence, I really do. That’s the core of everything. Daring to be truly honest and open, and letting the other person be the same, not rushing in with defensiveness. Stepping outside our male/female roles, or whatever our ideas about the rules of romantic love are, and just connect, human to human. To communicate truth.