3) Sean Penn
For a while Sean Penn was probably the best actor in the world, you know, during that period when Daniel Day-Lewis wasn’t doing too much work and Penn was sort of churning out these insanely good performances in things like Dean Man Walking, Sweet and Lowdown, I Am Sam, and Mystic River. His work in Milk speaks for itself. It’s a brilliant portrayal of a real life hero whose spirit Penn captures pretty much perfectly, well deserving of the Oscar he received.
But good god does he ever seem awful as a person. I’m probably sympathetic with most if not all of his causes with Hurricane Katrina and same-sex marriage and everything, but he’s the type of sanctimonious douche that give liberals a bad name. Then of course there’s his violent tendencies: documented cases of assaulting photographers, for which he once spent over a month in prison, and the domestic assault charges he incurred while married to Madonna, whom he apparently hit in the head with a baseball bat. I don’t know what it’s like to live with Madonna but that’s just horribly unnecessary.
If you ask me, he’s not really in a great position to preach to others about what they should be doing in Haiti, or how they should treat Jude Law with more respect, or even how Terrence Malick should cut his movies. He sure can act, though.