Sean Penn’s Son Hopper Recalls Dad’s Tough-Love Response to His Drug Addiction
Hopper Penn, the 23-year-old son of Oscar winner Sean Penn, remembers the exact moment that he decided to seek treatment for his addiction to crystal meth. His father made it pretty simple for him.
“I went to rehab because I woke up in a hospital, and my dad was like, ‘Rehab? Or bus bench?’” Hopper said in a new interview with ES Magazine. “I was like, ‘I’ll take the bed.’ Thank God I got out of that, because that was the worst time in my life. Because it’s not fun when it gets to a point where you just need it.”
Hopper, whose mother is Robin Wright, Sean’s actress ex-wife, spent most of his early years in a small town outside San Francisco. He and his older sister, Dylan, 25, attended public schools, although they were often on movie sets during school breaks.
“Some of the kids that grow up in Los Angeles with that life, they have this impression of themselves, like they’re more important than other people,” Hopper told the magazine. “But they’re not real to me. … I don’t feel like I have a Hollywood family, really. I feel pretty normal.”
Following Sean and Robin’s 2007 split — as opposed to the other times they broke up and then got back together — Hopper found himself in L.A. again. Robin had decided to relocate, and Sean was already back in Hollywood.
“Honestly? I was pretty mad, because they had split up before and then got back together, and then they did it again,” Hopper confessed. “So it was like, ‘Pick which one you’re gonna do.’ I was young and thinking: ‘Are you just f***ing with me and my sister?” I mean, it was not the best. It was kind of tough, talking to them. Because they were both pretty broken too, I think.”
Trouble for Hopper began when, just after the move, he had a terrible skateboarding accident that required brain surgery. He was OK, but without one of his favorite pastimes. As a result, he began hanging out with what he called “the wrong crowd” and moved from smoking pot to taking crystal meth, the drug that ultimately took him down.
“I was pretty bad. I just got caught a lot doing stuff, you know?” he said. “Whether it was my parents or the cops.”
After Hopper’s recovery, Sean steered him to play a part written for him in a movie Sean was directing, even though Hopper had always vowed that he’d never act.
“He really wanted to work with me, and it ended up being great,” Hopper said of the film The Last Face. “But, yeah, maybe it was about giving me just a little structur, and trying to get me to get my own thing going.”
The movie was obviously the nudge Hopper needed. He has since taken acting classes and filmed a movie with Brad Pitt. He’s also one of the many celebrity kids — although not such a kid anymore — to model. Hopper is featured in a new campaign for Fendi eyewear.
So, yeah, he’s at least a little Hollywood now.
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