Sean Penn

For a moment, it's a similar relief and a similar moment of being able to breathe and be present.

And that's no different than to rebuild housing for someone.

It's all kind of one thing.

Well, in some ways it's simpler than ideas.

I had briefly worked with Paul Thomas Anderson on licorice pizza.

But more than that, I'd known him for a very long time.

And he had offered me a movie.

Which movie was that?

It was the one that Adam Sandler did.

Punch Drunk Love.

And I read it.

And the only reason I didn't do it

is because it wasn't that I didn't like the role he was offering me.

It's that I couldn't do that movie and not do the Adam Sandler part.

I had an approach in my head very different than what Adam did beautifully, but a very different attack on it.

So I said, you know, let me know if Adam gets sick or drops out.

But anyhow, so there was a predisposition to work together, and we would always flirt with it when we would see each other.

And then I got sent this, and I knew Leo was attached.

I think I got about 10 to 15 pages in, and I was just, I could not have been happier with what he had decided to take on.

And I immediately told Paul, you know, tell me where to go.