Biografia

He directed 8 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Patty Duke, Anne Bancroft, Estelle Parsons, Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Michael J. Pollard and Chief Dan George. Duke, Bancroft and Parsons won Oscars for their performances in one of Penn's movies.

Older brother is renowned photographer Irving Penn.

Son of a nurse and a watchmaker.

Was an early contender to direct O Substituto (1980) and used elements from that film's source, the Paul Brodeur novel of the same name, in the story of Um Lance no Escuro (1975).

Served in the U.S. Army, 1943-46.

Lee Strasberg ruined an entire generation of actors with that sense memory crap.

There hasn't been much of a market for what I can do. I'm not into outer space epics or youth pictures.

[on Hurd Hatfield] America's least known great actor.

[1982 comment on Steven Spielberg] The movies have changed: there's now this wonderful storyteller Spielberg making benign movies that are enormously successful, while I'm known mainly for making movies about people shooting and cutting each other up. I love his work, but I could never make stuff like that.

[on acting] A look, a simple look, will do it.