On March 15, 2026, Sean Penn won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for One Battle After Another and became part of an elite club as one of the few actors to win three Oscars. Despite his win, the actor was a no-show at the prestigious awards ceremony, where presenter Kieran Culkin, who was last year’s winner for A Real Pain, accepted the award on his behalf, quipping that the actor “couldn’t be here this evening, or didn’t want to.”

According to The New York Times, Sean Penn apparently skipped the Oscars for a visit to Ukraine, as suggested by two sources. Meanwhile, Chris Cuomo, the brother of former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, also suggested that Penn was in Ukraine during the ceremony in response to a tweet wondering why the actor wasn’t at the Oscars, writing:

“He is actually in ukraine. Right now. That probably says a lot more.”

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti, and Sean Penn, won big at the Oscars, held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on March 15, 2026. The political movie led the charge with six wins, including Best Picture, Best Director for Anderson, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Casting, and Best Film Editing.

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners came in second with four wins. Michael B. Jordan, who won Best Actor for playing twins Smoke and Stack, prevailed over his fellow nominees Loenardo Di Caprio, Timothée Chalamet, Ethan Hawke, and Wagner Moura. Meanwhile, Penn’s fellow nominees included Delroy Lindo, Jacob Elordi, Stellan Skarsgård, and Benicio del Toro (also for One Battle After Another).

Jessie Buckley took home her first Oscar for Best Actress for Hamnet. Meanwhile, Amy Madigan won Best Supporting Actress for the horror flick Weapons.

Sean Penn previously gave one of his Oscars to the Ukrainian president

Sean Penn has been an active supporter of Ukraine since the country’s conflict with Russia in 2022. During an interview with CNN in March 2022, Penn vowed to melt his Oscar statues if the Academy did not give Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a platform to speak at the Oscars at the time

Additionally, Sean Penn loaned one of the statues to Zelenskyy when he visited Ukraine that November. According to an Instagram video posted on Zelenskyy’s account at the time, Penn took the statue out of a bag and placed it on the president’s desk, telling him to return it when Ukraine won.

“I feel terrible. This is for you. It’s just a symbolic silly thing, but if I know this is here with you then I’ll feel better and stronger for the fight. When you win, bring it back to Malibu. I’ll feel much better knowing a piece of me is here,” he said.

Sean Penn has been widely absent this awards season, despite racking up wins for his performance as Steven J. Lockjaw, the villain in One Battle After Another. Penn won a BAFTA and an Actor’s Award from the Screen Actors Guild but elected to skip both ceremonies.

According to Variety, he went on a rant against the Academy Awards for its “extraordinary cowardice” during a press conference at the Marrakech Film Festival in 2024, saying:

“The Academy have exercised really extraordinary cowardice when it comes to being part of the bigger world of expression and in fact, have largely been part of limiting the imagination and very limiting of different cultural expressions… So I don’t I get very excited about what we’ll call the Academy Awards [except for] when a film like ‘The Florida Project,’ or ‘I’m Still Here,’ or, you know, ‘Emilia Perez,’ of the things that are likely to happen this year.”

Sean Penn previously won the Oscar for Best Actor on two separate occasions, one for Mystic River in 2003 and the second for Milk in 2008.