Sean Penn Receives ‘Oscar’ in Ukraine After Skipping Academy Awards

When Kieran Culkin announced at the Academy Awards on Sunday that Sean Penn had won Best Supporting Actor for his turn as the menacing military colonel Steven J. Lockjaw in One Battle After Another, Penn was nowhere to be found. It turns out that the actor had opted for a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky instead of the Hollywood ceremony.

The Ukrainian president later posted a photo of them together on X, writing in the caption, “Sean, thanks to you, we know what a true friend of Ukraine is. You have stood with Ukraine since the first day of the full-scale war. This is still true today. And we know that you will continue to stand with our country and our people.”

Penn, who has spent significant time in Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion in 2022, was also honored by Ukraine’s state rail group, Ukrzaliznytsia. The Ukrainian railway said in an X post that it knew the actor had missed the Academy Awards, so the company “gave him one of his own” — an Oscar made from the “metal of a railway car damaged by russian shelling.” The railway called the gesture a “symbol of resilience” and shared a video of Penn being gifted the statue.

Penn, who has also won two previous Oscars for Best Actor — for Mystic River in 2003 and Milk in 2009— previously gifted Ukraine one of his statuettes during a visit to the country. “When you win, bring it back to Malibu,” Penn told Zelensky at the time. “Because I’ll feel much better knowing there’s a piece of me here.” 

In 2023, Penn and director Aaron Kaufman released their documentary, Superpower, on Ukraine and Zelensky amid Russia’s invasion.