Sean Penn enjoyed his Oscar win for the first time this year - because he wasn't at the ceremony.
The 65-year-old actor previously scooped the Best Actor accolades for Mystic River and Milk in 2004 and 2009 respectively, and added to his haul with the Best Supporting Actor statuette in March thanks to his performance in One Battle After Another, but he headed to Ukraine to meet with President Volodymir Zelenskyy and continue his humanitarian work, rather than put himself through the "anxiety" of attending the glitzy event.
Sean explained he had spoken to his One Battle After Another colleagues before the Academy Awards and they all agreed it would be "better for [his] mental health" if he didn't intend, but he still watched the ceremony on TV in the early hours of the morning.
Speaking at a Storytellers event as part of The Tribeca Film Festival in New York, he said: “I really got to enjoy the Academy Awards for the first time. It was great.
“The best that I could ever muster was relief.
“Knowing that I wasn’t going to do that anymore, I did one before that this year. I went to the Golden Globes; I’d never been to that before. And that’s where I decided, ‘I can’t do this.’”
The Tree of Life star explained he has imposed a rule that he won't socialise with more than eight people any more because bigger crowds are "anxiety and dread-inducing".
He said: "It’s not just [that it’s] an awards show.
"It would be the same if this group was going to an afterparty and one stepped into that. That always represented social discomfort for me; too many people. I’m now down, committed for life, that I won’t go anywhere to be in a designated group beyond eight people.
“[It’s] the ninth person. And it’s not the low-hanging fruit of ‘I don’t wanna be around all this fake Hollywood’ or something.
“The two times I had gone I felt relief that I’d won because so many people out there had worked really hard for that. There’s the politics of that stuff.”
Sean also admitted he refuses to pose for selfies for anyone, regardless of the circumstances.
He said: “People should not do selfies ever with anyone. It’s bad for you; it’s bad for everyone. It’s a soul-sucker.
“It’s the Holocaust grandmother and her six year old paraplegic wheeling over? It’s a hard no.”
