God Bless Chris Penn (1965-2006)

Chris Penn was found dead yesterday. He was never the kind of actor that stood out as the pretty boys of the 1980s did (Cruise, Lowe, Estevez) and he wasn't the bad ass wildcard that his brother, Sean, Kiefer Sutherland and Nicholas Cage were back in the day. Like Danny Aiello, Chris Penn was the everyday guy and totally believable as Kevin Bacon's dorky country sidekick in "Footloose", Sean Penn's gullible brother in "At Close Range", Nice Guy Eddie in "Reservior Dogs" and my favorite roll as Jerry in the Robert Altman film "Short Cuts." Chris wasn't beautiful by Hollywood standards. He was like a guy you would see at the grocery store who wouldn't make eye contact with you as he was buying diapers for his baby. I always liked Chris Penn because he was less of a Hollywood hotass than his brother and made his statement by being a total believable and vulnerable presence on screen. We lost a fine actor this week -- one under the surface, but as amazing and talented, or more, as all of his peers.

An excerpt from an article in 2004 by Salon sums it all up:


The mightier Penn

He transformed before us from a Caravaggio-like dancing teen to a love-handled bad guy. While Chris Penn has never received the attention of his older brother, he's deserved it -- and oh, so much more.

By Cintra Wilson

You've seen him as a good cop, and/or a bad cop. Or a mobster. Or yet another fat Irish cop. But there is a whole lot more soul and nuance to Chris Penn than is immediately evident in the mutton-headed roles he's been pigeonholed in.
It's hard to tell if Chris Penn has benefited as much as he's suffered professionally from the relation to his brother, the Great Sean, The Great Ahctor with a Capital Ah. He's just as talented as Sean -- just a lot less cocky. Chris is an expert at the one complicated emotional state Sean doesn't really display much of -- red-faced humiliation. Ego crush. The hyper-vulnerable, exposed weakness of the bed-wetter, the fuckup, the sad sack, the hapless loser, the beta male -- which, I think, in terms of pound-per-pound acting skill, is one of the hardest things to do. I think it's kind of easy for a skilled, handsome actor with an imagination and an ego to act like the sexiest mahfugger in town -- James Dean, Marlon Brando, Sean Penn -- but it takes someone really fearless to look openly lame, shamed, screwed-up, dumb and scared. A character who knows he is not and will never be Slick King Fabulous, while he does not inspire oiled-torso photo spreads in Vanity Fair, is ultimately way more intriguing and sympathetic, for that is the painful secret at the core of being a human being -- nobody is Slick King Fabulous, even when he is. This is a generous giving of the fragile, flawed self as opposed to a flexing of dreamy ego-might. As Prince says, in "Pop Life," everybody wants to be on top, but Chris Penn beautifully demonstrates how rich the agonies of life can be about a third of the way down.