Robin Wright has reflected on the difficulty of parenting with her ex-husband Sean Penn, saying that they were both opposite “extremes”.
The House of Cards actor, who was married to the two-time Oscar-winning star between 1996 and 2010, said in a new interview that Penn was the tougher parent, who would come home after being away on set and resume the role of the “policeman”.
“He was gone so much of the time. He’d come back and be the policeman and then he’d leave me with the residue,” Wright told The Times.
Wright said that she would try to “soften the blow” of Penn’s strictness, but they struggled to find a middle ground in their parenting styles.
“We were both extremes,” she added. “They didn’t get that grey area in the middle, which is stern, and that is what they needed.”
Wright and Penn, who share 34-year-old Dylan Frances Penn and 32-year-old Hopper Jack Penn with the actor, escaped Hollywood for Ross, a small town north of San Francisco, when their children were young.
Wright explained that she declined big roles during her career to focus on family, such as Maid Marian in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, in which Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio was cast instead.
The actor said she doesn’t regret her decision to prioritise her children, but would have done things differently, adding: “I have a huge regret as a mother and have experienced the fallout of this regret for many years with my kids – I wasn’t hard enough on them.”
The couple met on the set of State of Grace in 1990 and had an on-off relationship before marrying in 1996. They separated in 2007, got back together for a while and divorced in 2010.
Their son Hopper, an actor and model, has spoken about struggling with an addiction to crystal meth and being put into rehab by his father.
Wright reflected on motherhood more generally, saying: “Every day if the phone rings you’re, like, ‘Is he alive? Is she alive?’ I went through that for so many years with both of them.” She added that both of her children are in a “really good place right now”.
Hopper told People of his father’s parenting style in 2022: “He was strict, and I was always getting into trouble. We butted heads for a long time. But it’s very lax now. He’s chilled out in his older age.”
After Penn, Wright was twice engaged to American actor Ben Foster, but they never wed. She later married French fashion executive Clément Giraudet in 2018 before splitting in 2022.
Wright said she has now found “my person”: her partner, a British architect named Henry Smith, whom she met in an English country pub.
“He is a sweetheart and just a good, decent adult,” she said.
Wright is best known for playing Jenny in the 1994 classic Forrest Gump, and the title character in 1987’s The Princess Bride.
