5 Beloved Celebrities Everyone Forgets Did Terrible Things | Cracked.com
Sean Penn is known for two things: acting and taking regular shyts on right-wing politics. When the phrase "Hollywood liberal" gets tossed around, Penn is often one of the first examples mentioned. The Iraq War was perhaps his finest moment, as he spared no expense in letting the world know exactly
how he felt about young people dying for oil. Over and over again.
The Incident:
While married to Madonna, Sean Penn pulled a Chris Brown that out-Chris Browned Chris Brown before there even was a Chris Brown.
The two then-rising stars were married in 1985, although nobody really knows why, since the whole thing was a mess from the start. Sure, Penn was a ragehead who dealt with annoying paparazzi by
shooting at them, dangling them upside down from balconies, and smacking them with
rocks. But that's not what we're talking about here; his knack for doing the same kind of stuff to Madonna, however, very much is.
Penn and Madonna would get into violent arguments all the time, and it probably didn't help that Penn drank so much every night that even
Andre the Giant would've told him to slow it the fukk down. Finally, in 1988, after Penn flew into a rage over Madonna's supposed affair with Warren Beatty, she called the marriage off. Penn responded by turning his abusive nutcase dial up to 11.
After he got good and drunk (again), Penn climbed into Madonna's house, where she was alone. He then grabbed her, tied her to a chair, and
assaulted her for hours, both physically and emotionally. He then went out for more booze, came back, and kept up the beating. Madonna only escaped after telling Penn that she had to go to the bathroom, which meant he had no problem battering, beating, bloodying, and bruising the supposed love of his life, but felt it would have been too degrading to make her pee in front of him.
Why You Forgot About It:
While Penn was arrested, the charges were dropped because Madonna didn't want to generate a media circus, which may have been the one and only time in her life that Madonna actually wanted the press to go away. A couple of decades of political activism and two Oscars later, and the world barely remembers an incident that would turn most people into a pariah. But hey, can we really blame him for the immature mistakes he made when he was only, uh, 25 years old?