Ben
Stiller’s reimagining of James Thurber’s original story is highly entertaining
and inspiring, revolving around a man who loves to daydream, frequently
retreating into an imaginary world in which he is the hero. A photo
editor at LIFE Magazine in New York, he enjoys his job but longs for passion
and excitement. As he was about to lose his job as the company shifts and
downsizes, Mitty finds himself out of his office in no time. The final
issue of the prestigious magazine will soon be on newsstands, but a worried
MItty cannot find an important negative that has mysteriously gone missing.
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| Photo courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox |
The picture was taken by the iconic and elusive photographer Sean O’Connell
played by Sean Penn. Sean is the only one who knows where it is. But where is
Sean?
For all his fantasies of becoming a hero, Walter Mitty has his own very real
hero: the famed LIFE photographer Sean O’Connell, an elusive adventurer
who has become a kind of rock star of the photographic world, renowned for his
relentless commitment to chasing a story no matter the cost.
It seemed just the right match to cast Oscar®-winning actor and director Sean
Penn in the role of the mysterious icon who beckons Walter Mitty into the big,
wide open world. “Sean O’Connell is a guy who represents creative
integrity and he had to have this amazing presence that the audience connects
with instantly when Walter finally meets him. That’s why Sean Penn was
really my first choice because Sean embodies all that in life for me,” says Ben
Stiller. Stiller was also keen to cast Penn in the kind of role where one
of the leading dramatic actors of a generation wouldn’t normally be seen.
“Sean actually has a really great sense of humor,” he notes, “which I think
doesn’t get showcased that often in his film work, so it was fun to give him a
chance to do something different.”
Adds producer Stuart Cornfeld: “Sean O’Connell has a certain kind of
mystique, as does Sean Penn. What was amazing about his performance and
the way the character is written is that when Walter finally does meet Sean,
he's everything that Walter was looking for, but he's also completely different
at the same time. For all of us, Sean was just amazing to watch in
action.”
A two-time Academy Award winner, Sean Penn has become an American film icon in
a career spanning more than three decades. Penn has been nominated five times
for the Academy Award, as Best Actor for “Dead Man Walking,” “Sweet and
Lowdown” and “I Am Sam,” and won his first Oscar in 2003 for his searing
performance in Clint Eastwood's “Mystic River” and his second Oscar as Best
Actor in 2009 for Gus Van Sant's “Milk.” The performance as gay rights icon
Harvey Milk also garnered Penn Best Actor awards from The Screen Actors Guild
(SAG™), New York Film Critics Circle and Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
As a journalist, Penn has written for Time, Interview, Rolling Stone and The
Nation magazines. In 2004, Penn wrote a two-part feature in The San Francisco
Chronicle after a second visit to war-torn Iraq. In 2005, he wrote a five-part
feature in the same paper reporting from Iran during the election which led to
the Ahmadinejad regime. Penn's landmark interviews with Venezuelan President
Hugo Chávez and Cuba's President Raul Castro were published in The Nation and
The Huffington Post. Penn's interview with President Castro was his first-ever
interview with an international journalist.
His humanitarian work found him in New Orleans in the immediate aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina and, more recently, in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. In January
2010, Penn established the J/P Haitian Relief Organization (J/P HRO). J/P HRO
has become a leader in Haiti across multiple sectors, working to improve living
conditions in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps and surrounding
neighborhoods by clearing rubble and providing medical services, education and
enricmment programs, housing construction, and neighborhood redevelopment. J/P
HRO's main objective remains to help displaced people get back to durable,
safer, and permanent homes in revitalized neighborhoods.
Be a part of a man’s transformational journey in “The Secret Life of Walter
Mitty” as it hops from the four corners of one’s office to Greenland, Iceland,
Himalayas and ultimately to self-discovery when it opens January 22 in the
Philippines from 20th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.
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